His first sensation in ‘the rooms’ was disappointing. The decorations were florid, the people foreign, queer, ugly! For some time he stood still listening to the chink of rake against coin, and the nasal twang of the croupiers’ voices. Then he had gone up to a table to watch the game, which he had never played. That, at all events, was the same as now; that and the expression on the gamblers’ faces--the sharp, blind, crab-like absorption like no other human expression. And what a lot of old women! A nervous excitement had crept into his brain while he stood there, an itch into his fingers. But he was shy. All these people played with such deadly calm, seemed so utterly familiar with it all. At last he had reached over the shoulder of a dark-haired woman sitting in front of him, put down a five-franc piece, and called out the word ‘_Vingt_.’ A rake shovelled it forward on to the number with an indifferent click. The ball rolled. “_Quatorze, rouge pair et manque._” His five-franc piece was raked away. But he, Philip Trevillian, had gambled at Monte Carlo, and at once he had seemed to see Varvara’s eyes with something of amusement in their candour, and to hear her voice: “But to gamble! How silly, Philip Philipovitch!” Then the man sitting to his left got up, and he had slipped down into the empty chair. Once seated, he knew that he must play. So he pushed another five-franc piece on to black and received its counterpart. Now he was quits; and, continuing that simple stake with varying success, he began taking in the faces of his neighbours. On his left he had an old Englishman in evening dress, ruddy, with chubby lips, who played in gold pieces and seemed winning rather heavily. Opposite, in a fabulous shawl, a bird-like old woman, with a hook nose, and a man who looked like a Greek bandit in a frock-coat. To his right was the dark-haired woman over whose shoulder he had leaned. An agreeable perfume, as of jasmine blossoms, floated from her. She had some tablets and six or seven gold pieces before her, but seemed to have stopped playing. Out of the tail of his eye Trevillian scrutinised her profile. She was by far the most attractive woman he had seen in here. And he felt suddenly uninterested in the fate of his five-franc pieces. Under the thin, dark brows, a little drawn down, he could see that her eyes were dark and velvety. Her face was rather pointed, delicate, faintly powdered in the foreign fashion. She wore a low dress, but with a black lace scarf thrown over her gleaming shoulders, and something that glimmered in her dark hair. She was not English, but what he could not tell. He won twice running on black, left his stake untouched, and was conscious that she pushed one of her own gold pieces on to black. Again black won. Again he left his stake, and she hers. To be linked with her by that following of his luck was agreeable to young Trevillian. The devil might care--he would leave his winnings down.