And so, for the first time in his life, Thyrsis learned what it meant to lay his soul upon the lap of the goddess of chance. From eight o’clock that evening until two the next morning, he sat in a suffocating room full of cigarette-smoke, trying in vain to win back the dollar or two he had lost at the outset; flushed and trembling with excitement, and hating himself with a bitter and tormenting hatred. And so he discovered his vice; he discovered that he had in him the soul of the gambler! And all the rest of the winter he had to wrestle with that shame. He would go to his dinner, tired and heartsick; and they would ask him to play again; and he--the man who carried a message for humanity in his heart--he would yield! Three times during that winter he fell into the mire; on Washington’s birthday he began to play in the morning, and stopping only for meals, he played until long after midnight. Forever afterwards he was a humbler and a gentler man because of that experience; understanding how squalor abases one, and how swiftly and stealthily an evil passion closes its grasp about the soul. Section 2. Of this shameful thing he said not a word to Corydon. But he avoided meeting her, because of the depths of his despair. And so at last there came a letter from her--a long and unusual one. Corydon, too, was having her troubles, it appeared. “I am writing in haste,” she said; “I shall mail the letter at once, before my resolution fails me. At least a dozen times I have made up my mind to tell you or to write you what is here, and each time I have turned back. But now I have got to a stage where I must have your help. “I enclose a long letter which I wrote you years ago, before we were married. I was looking over some old papers the other day and came upon it. Generally when I wrote you letters that I did not send, I tore them up; but something led me to keep this one--I had a feeling that some day it would be interesting as a curiosity. You see, I am always persuading myself that I can get over this trouble, and learn to laugh at it; and I am always succeeding--but only to have it crop up in some different form. I have told you a little of it now and then--but stop and read the enclosed, and you will see.” So Thyrsis read the old letter--a missive of anguish and terror, and beginning with elaborate preludings and hesitations: