“Don’t say a word,” she said kindly, with the obvious intent of putting him at his ease. “You haven’t hurt my feelings a bit. I know when to get mad; and I know when not to. I don’t think either of you meant a thing. And it’s a comfort to be sitting here with two men from home. Forget it!” Angier withdrew his face from the tall glass. He put his hand on the roughened hand of the girl as it rested on the table beside her soda water. “I’m sorry,” he said. “And I want to ask you something quite aside from the bet. We’re all Americans, as you said. Is there anything that we could do for you?” Mary Casey put her other hand on top of his and pressed it. For a moment there was a mist over her blue eyes. “You’re a nice boy. Much obliged. But there isn’t anything. I’m taking care of myself; and I can pay my rent, and pick up my meals one way or another. And not from men!” The guarded look was again in evidence as she said this. Then she laughed. “You see how mean I am, about suspecting men! But I have to be that way. There aren’t too many you can trust.” To the jerky strains of Manila’s latest jazz--a tune already, in America, a year old and buried--she leaned across the rickety table and looked from one to the other of the men. It was a direct, level look. “What was the bet?” “Oh, I say! Miss Casey!” began Angier uncomfortably. “See here: I’ve already said I was sorry I’d made it.” He took out his cigarette case. He struck a match. There was a tinge of nervousness in his manner. Mary extended her hand for a cigarette. “Might as well have one,” she said; “though it does register guilt, in the movies, for a woman to smoke!” She leaned back in her cane chair and absently watched the thin blue vapour that curled up from her nose. Her rouged lips were parted in a rather hard smile. “Never occurred to you, did it, that women could stay straight easier if you men weren’t so keen on saying we were crooked? Of course I can guess what the bet was! And I can very nearly guess which of you it was who bet for me. And--on account of one of you having taken a chance on me--I may tell you a thing or two before the evening is over. I’d somehow like a man who had the nerve to take a chance like that--on my side--to win his bet!” The muchacho approached the table for orders. He bowed obsequiously to the two officers and brushed his arm contemptuously across the shoulder of Mary Casey. He drew back suddenly, rubbing his cheek. Miss Casey’s hand had administered a smart slap on that yellow expanse. She glanced apologetically at the two Americans. “It’s the only way to treat ’em,” she informed them. “Treat ’em rough, and in a hurry! That’s my way, and it works. If you don’t know the game, this is no place for you.” She looked out over the floor. A stout and perspiring mestizo, with the unmistakable Chinese look, was approaching.