luck to the Asshlins since poor Anthony went
below. But come along, man!--come along! Here's to the youth of us!"

He drained his glass; and turned again to the business of the cards.

During the next half-dozen games neither spoke. With deep absorption,
Asshlin followed the run of the cards. Once or twice an exclamation
escaped him; once or twice he paused to replenish Milbanke's glass or
his own; but in every other respect he had eyes and thoughts for
nothing but the business in hand. Milbanke, on the contrary--gambler
neither by instinct nor training--was infinitely more interested in his
opponent than in the play.

As he watched Asshlin, a score of recollections rose to his
mind--recollections that time and advancing age had all but effaced. He
recalled the numberless occasions upon which the Irishman, in the
exuberance of youth, had sat over a gaming-table until the daylight had
streamed in across the scattered cards, the heaped-up cigar-ashes and
the emptied glasses; he reviewed the rare occasions on which his
cajoleries had drawn him from his own mild pursuits to be a sharer in
these prolonged revels; and with the memory came the thought of the
headache, the sick sense of weariness that had invariably lain in wait
for him the following morning. A wondering admiration for Asshlin had
always held a place in these jaded after-sensations--a species of
hero-worship for one who could turn into bed at four in the morning and
emerge at nine with all the vigour and vitality of the most virtuous
sleeper. He had never fully realised that to men of Asshlin's stamp
dissipation, excitement, and action are potent stimulants, calling
forth all the superfluous nervous energy that by nature they possess.
While the tide of life runs high about such men, they are borne
forward, buoyed up by their own capacity for living and enjoying. To
them, existence at high pressure is a glorious, exalted state, exempt
from satiety or fatigue; it is the quieter phases of existence--the
phases that to ordinary men mean rest, peace, domestic tranquillity and
domestic interests--that these exuberant, ardent human beings have
cause to dread.

An hour went by, and still the idea of a past, curiously reflected and
curiously contradicted, absorbed Milbanke's perceptions. Then gradually
but decisively it was borne in upon his mind that his absorption was
blunting his common sense. He was playing execrably.

It has been said that he was no gambler; b