drawer and took out a pack of worn, filthy cards. While she rapidly shuffled them she peered at him closely, not so much with a direct gaze as from under her eyes. She was a woman of forty, Italian, thin and swarthy, with large, sharp, cunning eyes. She placed three cards upon the table, and said:
"Let us first see what has brought you here. The gentleman has just received a severe shock and is in great fear . . ."
Camillo, astonished, nodded affirmatively.
"And he wishes to know," she continued, "whether anything will happen to him or not . . ."
"To me and to her," he explained, excitedly.
The fortune-teller did not smile; she simply told him to wait. She took the cards hastily once more and shuffled them with her long tapering fingers whose nails were so long and unclean from neglect; she shuffled them well, once, twice, thrice; then she began to lay them out. Camillo's eyes were riveted upon her in anxious curiosity.
"The cards tell me . . ."
Camillo leaned forward to drink in her words one by one. Then she told him to fear nothing. Nothing would happen to him or to the other. He, the third, was aware of
