a thought. One heard
nothing but bridge, bridge, bridge. I was sick of the word.

"But I found they played poker. Polly and Aileen, Alice Thorndyke, Janet
Maynard, Mary Kimball, Nick Doremus, Rex and one or two other men who
could get off in the afternoons.

"I never had dreamed any one in society played for such high stakes.
Janet Maynard and Mary Kimball could afford it, but Polly and Alice and
Aileen couldn't. Still they often won--enough, anyhow, to clean up and go
on. Doremus is a wonderful player. That is how I got interested, watching
him after he had explained the game to me.

"It was a long time before I was persuaded to take a hand. It was so
interesting just to watch. And not only the game, but their faces. Some
would have a regular 'poker face,' others would give themselves away.
Once Aileen had the most awful hysterics. We were afraid some one outside
would hear her; the deadening was burnt out of the walls of the Fairmont
at the time of the fire. But we were in the middle room of the suite.

"Nick told her in his dreadful cold expressionless voice that if she ever
did that again he'd never play another game with her. That meant that
they'd all drop her, and she came to and promised, and she kept her word.
Poker is the breath of life to her. I think she'd become a drug fiend if
she couldn't have it.

"At last they persuaded me to play. We were playing at Nick's, and after
a light dinner served by his Jap, we went right on playing until
midnight. I never thought of you or anything. I seemed to respond with
every nerve in my body and brain. I won and won and won, and even when I
lost I didn't mind. The sensation, the tearing excitement just under a
perfectly cool brain was wonderful.

"I only ceased to enjoy it when I realized what it meant. When I couldn't
keep away from it. When I lived for the hour when we would meet,--at
Polly's, or at Nick's or at Aileen's--any of the places where we were
supposed to be dancing, but where there was no danger of being found out.
Of course I dared not have them at home, and the others lived with their
families, or had too many servants....

"I came fully to my senses one day when Nick told me I was a born
gambler if ever there was one. Then, when I realized, I became
desperately unhappy.

"I was the slave of a thing. I was deceiving you. When I was at the table
I loved poker better than you, better than anything on earth. When I was
alone I hated it. But I couldn'