He gave her a long look, a reluctant sour smile. She was bantering him—over something known to them, only to be conjectured by Arsenio and me; something that had passed on the Lido? She had for him a touch of the detached scornful amusement which Arsenio’s decorations had roused in her, but with a sharper tang in it—more bite to less laughter. “I’m not a gambler, though I’m not afraid of a business risk,” he answered. She laughed lightly. “A business risk would never have brought the splendor of to-night!” She smiled round at the ridiculously festooned walls. We were quickly disposing of an excellent, well-served dinner; Louis was quick and quiet, fat Amedeo more sensible than he looked, undoubtedly a good cook was in the background. Growing physically very comfortable, I got largely rid of the queer apprehensions which had haunted me; I paid less heed to Arsenio, and more to the secret subtle duel which seemed to be going on between the other two. Arsenio played more with his topic—birth, death, life, love—all gambles into which men and women were involuntarily thrown, with no choice but to play the cards or handle the dice; all true and obvious in a superficial sort of way, but it seemed rather trifling—a mood in which life can be regarded, but one in which few men or women really live it. That he was one of the few himself, however, I was quite prepared to concede; the magnitude of his gains—and of his loss—as convincing. Louis and Amedeo served us with coffee and Louis set a decanter of brandy in front of Arsenio. Then they left us alone. Arsenio poured himself out a glass of brandy, and handed the decanter round. Holding his glass in his hand, he turned to Lucinda. “Will you drink with me—to show that you forgive my sins?” Her eyes widened a little at the suddenness of the appeal; but she smiled still, and answered lightly, “Oh, I’ll drink with you——” She sipped her brandy—“in memory of old days, Arsenio!” “I see,” he said, nodding his head at her gravely. She had refused to drink with him on his terms; she would do it only on her own. “Still—you shall forgive,” he persisted with one of his cunning smiles. Then he turned suddenly to Godfrey Frost with a change of manner—with a cold malice that I had never seen in him before, a malice with no humor in it, a straightforward viciousness. “Then let us drink together, my friend!” he said. “It was with that object that I brought you here to-night. We’ll drink together, as we have failed together, Godfrey Frost! A business risk you spoke of just now! It wasn’t a bad speculation! A couple of hundred or so—Oh, I had more from your cousin, but her motives were purely charitable, eh?—just a beggarly couple of hundred for a chance at that!” A gesture indicated Lucinda. His voice rose; it took on its rhetorical note, and the words fell into harmony with it. “To buy a man’s honor and beauty like that for a couple of hundred—not a bad risk!”