s
wife--the great ultimate purpose of his life. He did not tell it to
Olive. She was to be used as a pawn in the great game, just as he was
using Sir Francis and the dead Clifford Matheson. It came upon him that
she was now a widow. He would fan her open admiration so as to make use
of it when she awoke to the fact of her widowhood.

So he answered: "How far I climb depends on the help of my best friends.
I don't hide that. When my dear wife was with me, she was an inspiration
to me. No man can drive his car to the summit without a woman to spur
him on."

"Did marriage change you much?"

"Strengthened me. Bolted me to my foundations.... But here I'm
monopolizing the conversation with talk about myself. Let's switch. What
are _your_ ambitions?"

Olive laughed--a laugh with a bitter taste in it. "I wanted to help a
man to drive his car to the summit, and the car has stuck. I could
inspire, but my inspiring goes to waste. I'm an engine racing without a
shaft to take up its energy. Clifford is developing scruples. I don't
know where he caught them. I can't stand sick people. That's my
temperament--I must have energy and action around me."

"I understand that. Felt it myself at times," he answered
sympathetically.

Without apparent reason her thoughts skipped to a woman who had sat near
them at the roulette table. "Wasn't she the image of a disappointed
vulture? I mean the woman in green. Swooping down from a distance to
gorge herself with a tasty feast, and then finding a man with a rake to
chase her off. I chuckled to myself as I watched her. Do men and women
look to you like animals? They do to me. Monte Carlo's a Zoo, only the
animals aren't caged."

"That's right! You're an extraordinarily keen observer, Mrs Matheson."

Sir Francis Letchmere approached them beamingly from the direction of
the Casino. He had won money at _trente-et-quarante_, and was feeling
very pleased with his own judgment and powers of intellect generally.

"Leave him to me," whispered Olive to Larssen. "I'll see that my father
gets busy on the Hudson Bay Scheme. But on one condition."

"What's that?"

"That you stay on at Monte for a few days. I don't want to be left here
alone. I hate being alone."

"I'm due back in London. Urgent business matters."

"Leave them for a few days. Leave them to your managers. Stay here and
amuse me."

Larssen knew when to give way--or seem to give way--and how to do so
gracefully.

"I'll stay on w