A Case of Conscience.
PAUL BOURGET.
I HAD gone into the club upon leaving the opera and stopped in front of the baccarat table. I was observing matters from my perch on one of those high chairs that are placed there for the accommodation of such players as may have been unable to find room at the board and of simple onlookers like myself. It was what was called, in club parlance, a stiff game. The banker, a good-looking young man in evening dress with a gardenia in his buttonhole, had lost about three thousand louis, but his features, those of a man about town of twenty-five, were set impassibly to conceal all evidence of emotion. All was that the corner of the mouth that kept letting fall the fateful words: "I deal—cards—baccarat—That's a point" would not have chewed so fiercely the end of an unlighted cigar had not the cold fever of the game weighed heavily on his heart. Facing him a white-haired individual, a professional gambler, was acting as croupier, and this person took no pains to conceal his vexation at the run of ill-luck which, at every deal, was reducing the dimensions of the pile of coin and counters before him. On the other hand the most
143
