“Oh, I didn’t know they’d been to Venice. Nobody ever writes to tell me anything when I’m away.” “Poor old chap! Get a wife, and she’ll write to tell you she’s in debt. I say, oughtn’t we to be moving? It won’t look well to be late, you know.” “Don’t be fidgety. We’ve got half an hour, and it’s not above ten minutes’ walk.” “There’ll be a squash, and I want a good place. Come on, Julius.” He rose from the table rather abruptly; indeed, with an air of something like impatience or irritation. “Hang it! you might be going to be married yourself, you’re in such a hurry,” I said, as I finished my glass of brandy. As we walked, Valdez was silent. I looked at his profile; the delicate fine lines were of a poet’s, or what a poet’s should be to our fancy. Not so much as a touch of the monkey! That touch, indeed, when it did come, came on the lips; and it came seldom. It was the devastating acumen and the ruthless cruelty of boyhood that had winged the shaft of his school nickname. Yet it had followed him to the varsity; it followed him now; I myself often called him by it. “Monkey Valdez”! Not pretty, you know. It did not annoy him in the least. He thought it just insular; possibly that is all it was. But such persistence is some evidence of a truthfulness in it. “Have you been trying a fall with Dame Fortune lately?” I asked. He turned his face to me, smiling. “I’m a reformed character. At least, I was till a fortnight ago. I hadn’t touched a card or seen a table for above a year. Seemed not to want to! A great change, eh? But I didn’t miss it. Then when—when I decided to come over here, I thought I would go round by the Riviera, and just get out at Monte Carlo, and have a shot—between trains, you know. I wanted to see if my luck was in. So I got off, had lunch, and walked into the rooms. I backed my number everyway I could—_en plein_, _impair_, all the rest. I stood to win about two hundred louis.” “Lost, of course?” “Not a bit of it. I won.” “And then lost?” “No. I pouched the lot and caught my train. I wasn’t going to spoil the omen.” He was smiling now—very contentedly. “What was the number?” “Twenty-one.” “This is the twenty-first of July,” I observed. “Gamblers must be guided by something, some fancy, some omen,” he said. “I had just heard that Waldo and Lucinda were to be married on the twenty-first.” The monkey did peep out for a moment then; but we were already in George Street; the church was in sight, and my attention was diverted. “Better for you if you’d lost,” I murmured carelessly. “Aye, aye, dull prudence!” he said mockingly. “But—the sensation! I can feel it now!”