k, heavy
carpets on the floors, into which your feet sank with an air of
satisfying luxury.

The room into which we entered was indeed absolutely windowless. It
was a room built within the original room of the old house. Thus the
windows overlooking the street from the second floor in reality bore
no relation to it. For light it depended on a complete oval of lights
overhead so arranged as to be themselves invisible, but shining
through richly stained glass and conveying the illusion of a slightly
clouded noon-day. The absence of windows was made up for, as I learned
later, by a ventilating device so perfect that, although everyone was
smoking, a most fastidious person could scarcely have been offended by
the odor of tobacco.

Of course I did not notice all this at first. What I did notice,
however, was a faro-layout and a hazard-board, but as no one was
playing at either, my eye quickly traveled to a roulette-table which
stretched along the middle of the room. Some ten or a dozen men in
evening clothes were gathered watching with intent faces the spinning
wheel. There was no money on the table, nothing but piles of chips of
various denominations. Another thing that surprised me as I looked was
that the tense look on the faces of the players was anything but the
feverish, haggard gaze I had expected. In fact, they were sleek,
well-fed, typical prosperous New-Yorkers rather inclined to the
noticeable in dress and carrying their avoirdupois as if life was an
easy game with them. Most of them evidently belonged to the financial
and society classes. There were no tragedies; the tragedies were
elsewhere--in their offices, homes, in the courts, anywhere, but not
here at the club. Here all was life, light, and laughter.

For the benefit of those not acquainted with the roulette-wheel--and I
may as well confess that most of my own knowledge was gained in that
one crowded evening--I may say that it consists, briefly, of a wooden
disc very nicely balanced and turning in the center of a cavity set
into a table like a circular wash-basin, with an outer rim turned
slightly inward. The "croupier" revolves the wheel to the right. With
a quick motion of his middle finger he flicks a marble, usually of
ivory, to the left. At the Vesper Club, always up-to-date, the ball
was of platinum, not of ivory. The disc with its sloping sides is
provided with a number of brass rods, some perpendicular, some
horizontal. As the ball and the wheel