She looked across at her husband. He was sitting near the medium, engaging her in talk, and it seemed as if his words were the mere play of his graceful fingers, on one of which the ring was flashing, as if dominating the whole. Then the woman’s heart was overcome with a strange sad feeling, stilling the fever in her breast--a feeling of lofty womanly sympathy. He seemed such a child, she said to herself. “Without me he would be defenceless. He is like a hoop rolling down the street, its course determined by the obstacles and unevennesses in its path.” With this feeling upon her, she experienced a renewed glow as she thought of her encounter with the dancer; she was lifted out of her everyday existence, borne onward as in a mighty rush of passion, then again becoming cool and collected as at the contact with something cold and forbidding. It seemed to her then that she was struggling to reach her husband and ever as she approached him she was driven back, encountering the inflexible and steely glance of the man beside her. Mabuse grew more and more silent. He ate nothing, and he took no pains to conceal his taciturnity. On the contrary, he seemed, as it were, to strive to impress it upon the whole company, just as a mighty African potentate might exercise his tyranny on his patient and long-suffering followers, and the very actions of the others served to accentuate this attitude of adoration of a superior force. Count Told alone seemed to trifle with graceful gestures about the medium, who, black-haired and deadly pale, kept her unwieldy form pressed close to his side, seeming to have eyes for no other. Then the Countess felt that she hated the man who sat beside her in his sullen mood while her husband’s attitude was thus bordering on the ridiculous. And yet it was not hate she felt, but the inward conflict between the desire to yield herself to the domination of a self-sufficing and stronger heart and brain and resistance to the impulse of subjugation. The supper-table was cleared and the company stood around talking for a while. Mabuse had left his table-companion and sought the society of Count Told. He engaged him in a discourse on the psychological aspect of gambling. “I am a born gambler,” said the Count. “When I am losing, I remain as cold as ice, but when I am winning my brain lights up and my phantasies are redoubled.” Then Mabuse said: “Games of chance are the oldest form, the strongest and most widespread form, in which a man who is not gifted with artistic expression may yet feel himself an artist.” “That is an interesting idea,” said the Count; “pray follow it up a little further.”