He was quite uplifted, so gaily preoccupied with his achievement that he noticed nothing strange in her mien. She was glad that he noticed nothing; and yet also she was sorry; she would have liked him, after a single glance at her, to have said in his curt, quiet, assured manner: "What’s wrong?" She kept thinking, but not of Felix: "He must be very fickle and capricious. I’m certain he was making love to _her_. He happens to see me and off he runs after me! He can’t be any good, with his debts and things. I was right to give him the bird. But he’s terribly nice, and I don’t care. I don’t know what on earth’s the matter with me. I think I must be a bit mad, and always was. If I wasn’t, should I be here?" Transiently she viewed herself as, for example, Gertie Jackson would have viewed her. And then she saw another and a worse self and viewed that other self as Lilian the staid and constant friend of Felix would naturally view such an abandoned girl. She was afraid of and disgusted by the possibilities discovered in the depths of her own mind. At the desk the dancing girl whom Felix had indicated as inhabiting their hotel hurried up passionately and forestalled them. She threw down two green counters, as it were in anger. "Can I play with _that_!" she exclaimed in cockney English. The changer handed her two hundred-franc notes, which she crumpled in her hand. "I must find a hundred thousand francs from somewhere!" she cried, departing. She was talking to herself. As she moved away a stout, oldish man with a thick lower lip, pearl studs in his shirt-front, and a gleaming white waistcoat, joined her, and they disappeared together. Lilian stared after her in amazement. Felix’s winnings suddenly seemed very insignificant. Still when he received six fine fresh thousand-franc notes, besides some small notes, in exchange for valueless discs, and handed to her one of the fine fresh notes--"That’s for saving me from myself!"--she was impressed anew. A palace of magic, the baccarat rooms! The real thing, gambling! "What do you want to do now?" he asked. "Dance? No? Well, I’ll do anything you like, anything, the most absurd thing. Is that talking?" They were moving somewhat aimlessly down the grand staircase. "Felix, darling," she murmured, "let’s go for a motor run in the hills. There’s a lovely moon. I should so love it." She desired to be alone with him precisely as she had been alone with him in the taxi after their first dinner. She had a fancy for just that and nothing else. She pictured them together in the car, in the midst of gigantic nature and in the brilliant night. "But it will be cold!" he protested.