usement for to-night?"

Before going to the Casino, Olive made an excuse to return to her rooms
at the Hesperides. Alone in her bedroom, she took out from a locked
drawer a hypodermic syringe in silver and glass, and a phial of
colourless liquid. She held the phial in her hands with a curious look
of furtive tenderness, fondling it softly. For many months past this had
been her cherished secret--the drug that unlocked for her new realms of
fancy and exquisite sensation.

To herself she called it by a pet name, as though it were a lover.

In the course of the evening's play at the tables, Larssen was struck
with her increasing animation and gaiety. The heavy, listless look had
left her eyes, and they now glittered with life and fire. When they
left the tables to stroll by the milk-white terraces of the Casino,
there was a flush in her cheeks and iridescence in her speech very
different from a couple of hours before.

A spirit of caustic, impish brilliance was in her. She turned it upon
the people they had rubbed shoulders with at the tables; upon the people
walking past them on the terraces; even upon her husband:

"Clifford is a 90 per cent. success. There are men who can never achieve
full success in any field whatever. They climb up to 70, 80, 90 per
cent., and then the grade is too steep for them."

"They stick."

"Or run backwards downhill. I'm a passenger in a car of that kind. Near
to the top, but not reaching it. So I get out to walk on myself."

"There are mighty few men who have the 100 per cent. in them."

"Tell me this, Mr Larssen. Did you know you were a 100 per cent. man
when you started your business life, or did you come to realize it
gradually?"

"I knew it from the first," replied the shipowner steadily. "Knew it
when I was a mere kiddy. Set myself apart from the other boys. Told
myself I was to be their master. Made myself master. Fought for it.
Fought every boy who wouldn't acknowledge it.... When I went to sea as
cabin-boy on the "Mary R." of Gloucester, the men on the trawler tried
to "lick me into shape," as they called it. They didn't know what they
were up against. I used those men as whet-stones--used them to kick
fear out of myself. You notice that I limp a little? That's a legacy
from the days of the 'Mary R.'"

Olive looked at him with open admiration. "That's epic!" she exclaimed.
"How far are you going to climb?"

Larssen had never revealed to any man or woman--save only to hi