these felicities were but symbols. Now the wanderer with a haunting sense
of the Beyond, but without the true vagabond's divine gift of piercing the
veil, can only follow the obvious; and there are seasons when the obvious
fails to satisfy. When such a mood overcame her mistress, Turner railed at
the upsetting quality of foreign food, and presented bicarbonate of soda.
She arrived by a different path at the unsatisfactory nature of the
obvious. Sometimes, too, the pleasant acquaintances of travel were lacking,
and loneliness upset the nice balance of Zora's nerves. Then, more than
ever, did she pine for the Beyond.

Yet youth, receptivity, imagination kept her buoyant. Hope lured her on
with renewed promises from city to city. At last, on her homeward journey,
he whispered the magic name of Monte Carlo, and her heart was aflutter in
anticipation of wonderland.

She stood bewildered, lonely, and dismayed in the first row behind the
chairs, fingering an empty purse. She had been in the rooms ten minutes,
and she had lost twenty louis. Her last coup had been successful, but a
bland old lady, with the white hair and waxen face of sainted motherhood,
had swept up her winnings so unconcernedly that Zora's brain began to swim.
As she felt too strange and shy to expostulate she stood fingering her
empty purse.

The scene was utterly different from what she had expected. She had
imagined a gay, crowded room, wild gamblers shouting in their excitement, a
band playing delirious waltz music, champagne corks popping merrily,
painted women laughing, jesting loudly, all kinds of revelry and devilry
and Bacchic things undreamed of. This was silly of her, no doubt, but the
silliness of inexperienced young women is a matter for the pity, not the
reprobation, of the judicious. If they take the world for their oyster and