He had only meant to telephone to say that he was on the way up to her house, and he had managed to say that much--and she had coldly, contemptuously informed him that she would not be at home, and had hung up the receiver. She had given him no opportunity to say any more. It was not like Claire. It had been so unexpected that he had left the dock mentally dazed. The sight of the liner out in the stream had seemed to mock him ironically. After that, until now, he had followed the line of least resistance. He had come back here to the hotel, and dined with Larmon. He stood still in the middle of the room. Larmon! It had been a singular evening that he had just spent with Larmon. He had got a new viewpoint on Larmon--a strange, grave, sympathetic Larmon. He had given Larmon the details of everything that had happened; and Larmon had led him on to talk--of everything, and anything, it seemed now, as he looked back upon it. And somehow, he could not tell why, even while he felt that Larmon was drawing him out, urging him even to speak of Claire and the most intimate things of the last few weeks, he had been glad to respond. It was only when Larmon for a little while had discussed his great chain of gambling houses that he, John Bruce, had felt curiously detached from it all and estranged from the other, as though he were masquerading as some one else, as some one whom Larmon believed to be John Bruce, and as though he in his true self had no interest in these matters any longer in a personal sense, as though his connection with them had automatically ceased with the climax of Crang's removal. It was queer! But then his mind had been obsessed, elsewhere. And yet here, too, he had been frank with Larmon--frank enough to admit the feelings that had prompted him to refrain from actual play only two nights before. He remembered the quick little tattoo of Larmon's quill toothpick at this admission, and Larmon's tight little smile. Yes, it had been a singular evening! In those few hours he seemed to have grown to know Larmon as though he had known the man all his life, to be drawn to Larmon in a personal way, to admire Larmon as a man. There was something of debonair sang-froid about Larmon. He had made no fuss over his escape that day, and much less been effusive in any thanks. Larmon's philosophy of life was apparently definitely fixed and settled; and, in so far as Larmon was concerned, satisfactorily so. The whole world to Larmon was a gamble--and, consistently enough, his own activities in that respect were on as vast a scale as possible. Larmon with his unemotional face and his quill toothpick! No; not unemotional! When Larmon had finally pleaded fatigue and a desire to go to bed, there had been something in Larmon's face and Larmon's “good-night,” that still lingered with him, John Bruce, and which even now he could not define.