luck, but he, Crane the Banker, knew it was the lack of something, the
inability to make money.

"Made music to me on Crusader." Yes, that was it. With the Porters it
was jingle of spurs, and stride of the horse. All very fine in theory,
but racing, as he looked at it, was a question of proper odds, and many
other things connected with the betting ring.

Why did the girl, Allis, with her jingling verse creep into his mind.
Perhaps it was because she was so different from the woman who was
always steeped in stephanotis. Of the one there was only the memory of
an unmodulated voice and oppressive perfume; in truth, of the other
there was not much more--just a pair of big, blue-gray, honest eyes,
that somehow stared at him fearlessly, and withal with a great
sweetness.

Crane suddenly chuckled in dry disapprobation of himself. Grotesquely
enough, all at once he remembered that he was forty--that very day
forty. He ran his hand over his waistcoat, dipped two fingers into the
pocket and drew out a cigar. Ordinarily the face of an alabaster Buddha
was mobile and full of expression compared with Crane's. His mind
worked behind a mask, but it worked with the clean-cut precision of
clockwork. When his thoughts had crystallized into a form of
expression, Crane was very apt to be exactly right in his deductions.

Save for the curling smoke that streamed lazily upward from his cigar
one might have thought the banker fast asleep in his chair, so still he
sat, while his mind labored with the quiescent velocity of a spinning
top. He had won a big stake over Lauzanne's victory. The race had
helped beggar Porter, and brought Ringwood nearer his covetous grasp.