Madame, forgetting again to cheat in time, and losing her game, began
impatiently to shuffle her cards for a new deal.

"And yet, do you know, Josephine, those women are the unhappy ones of
life. They seem predestined to it, as others"--looking at madame's
full-charmed portrait--"are predestined to triumph and victory.
They"--unconscious, in his abstraction, of the personal nature of his
simile--"never know how to handle their cards, and they always play a
losing game."

"Ha!" came from madame, startled into an irate ejaculation.

"It is their love always that is sacrificed, their hearts always that
are bruised. One might say that God himself favors the black-haired
ones!"

As his voice sank lower and lower, the room seemed to become stiller
and stiller. A passing vehicle in the street, however, now and then
drew a shiver of sound from the pendent prisms of the chandelier.

"She was so slight, so fragile, and always in white, with blue in her
hair to match her eyes--and--God knows what in her heart, all the
time. And yet they stand it, they bear it, they do not die, they live
along with the strongest, the happiest, the most fortunate of us,"
bitterly; "and"--raising his eyes to his old friend, who thereupon
immediately began to fumble her cards--"whenever in the street I see
a poor, bent, broken woman's figure, I know, without verifying it
any more by a glance, that it is the wreck of a fair woman's figure;
whenever I hear of a bent, broken existence, I know, without asking