It was incredible that he should be speaking of that singularly modest and well-bred-looking woman, who followed the game with eyes that never lifted but once all the while Hildegarde stood there. It was when the last of her husband’s shrinking pile of chips was swept from him by the man opposite, that the woman, playing her own stiff game, not looking right nor left, must still have been acutely conscious of the full extent of the disaster at her side. The loser’s only comment was “My deal!” as he picked up the cards afresh. Then it was that she turned the white wedge on her pointed face, laid a hand on the dealer’s arm, and quite low, _“Don’t_ Jim!” she said, as though she hoped to influence him with her own hand full of cards. Naturally, he paid no heed, and each in the death-like silence, each went on with the game. There was something almost unnerving to the onlooker in the strained quiet of the woman. Was she winning or losing now? No hint of which in the pointed white mask, while she sat a little droop-shouldered, her arms lying on the table as if paralyzed, moving only her long supple fingers, gathering in or throwing out—unless she dealt, and even then moving about a tenth as much as any one else on either side up or down the long board. After what Governor Reinhart had said, each night on her way to bed, Hildegarde had paused a fascinated instant watching this woman; or by a group lower down where Curlyhead’s father was, often with his little boy on his knee. While the elders played, the five-year-old would sit quiet as a mouse staring wisely at his father’s cards, seeing in them his first picture-book, learning them for his earliest lesson. Hildegarde had watched it all before, but on this particular wet evening the spectacle assailed an unpanoplied spirit. It was horrible. She would never get the picture out of her head. Even when she should be at home again, doing delightful things with dear and happy people, she would remember this and the light would go out of the day. For it would be going on still. Somewhere, there would be people like these wasting and besmirching the flying, irrecoverable hours. Women, too, _women_! Something choked in her throat. She felt that she must strike the table and cry out: “Listen, listen! You haven’t ever heard. Life is beautiful and good, and you’ve never known that—poor, poor people. But I have come to tell you. Stop playing with those pieces of painted paper and listen to my good news!”