"I _am_ so sorry."

Her glance met a pair of unspeculative blue eyes, belonging to the owner of
the tired voice. She noted that he had a sallow face, a little brown
mustache, and a shock of brown hair, curiously upstanding, like Struwel
Peter's.

"I am _so_ sorry," she repeated. "Please ask for it back. What did you want
me to play?"

"I don't know. It doesn't matter, so long as you've put it somewhere."

"But I've put it _en plein_ on Seventeen," she urged. "I ought to have
thought what I was doing."

"Why think?" he murmured.

Mrs. Middlemist turned square to the table and fixed her eyes on the staked
louis. In spite of the blue-eyed man's implied acquiescence she felt
qualms of responsibility. Why had she not played on an even chance, or one
of the dozens, or even a _transversale_? To add to her discomfort no one
else played the full seventeen. The whole table seemed silently jeering at
her inexperience.

The croupiers had completed the payments of the last coup. The marble fell
with its sharp click and whizzed and rattled around the disc. Zora held her
breath. The marble found its compartment at last, and the croupier
announced: