day she became more patient, gentle and resigned, and in
proportion as she grew in these graces, her lover's awe and fear
increased, and so they drifted farther and farther apart.

Such relationships cannot continue forever, and they generally terminate
in tragedy.

After the first few months' excitement of his new life, David's
conscience began to torment him anew. He became melancholy, then moody,
and finally fell into the habit of sitting for hours among the crowds
which swarmed the gambling rooms, brooding over his secret. From stage
to stage in the evolution of his remorse he passed until he at last
reached that of superstition, which attacks the soul of the gambler as
rust does iron. And so the wretched victim of many vices sat one evening
at the close of the second year with his hat drawn down over his eyes,
reflecting upon his past.

"What's the matter, Davy?" asked a player who had lost his stake, and
was whistling good-humoredly as he left the room.

"Nothing," he muttered.

"Brace up, old man! There is no use taking life so hard! You've got
everything, and I've got nothing; and I am happy and you are miserable.
Brace up, I say!" And with that he slapped him familiarly on the
shoulder.

"Leave me alone," David growled, and reached for a glass mug containing
a strong decoction to which he was resorting more and more as his
troubles grew intolerable. A strange thing happened! As he put it to his
lips its bottom dropped upon the table and the contents streamed into
his lap and down to the floor. It was the straw that broke the camel's
back, for it had aroused a superstitious terror.

With a smothered cry he sprang to his feet and gazed around upon his
companions. They, too, had observed the untoward accident, and to them
as well as to him it was a symbol of disaster. Not one of them doubted
that the bottom would fall out of his fortunes as out of his glass, for
by such signs as these the gambler reads his destiny.

He pulled himself together and made a jest of the accident, but it was
impossible for him to dissipate the impression it had made on the minds
of his companions or to banish the gloom from his own soul. And so after
a few brave but futile efforts to break the spell of apprehension, he
slipped quietly away, opened the door and passed out into the night.

CHAPTER XX.

THE INEVITABLE HOUR

"How shall I lose the sin yet keep the sense,
And love th' offender, yet detest the o