John Bruce mounted the stairs, and began a stroll through the roulette and card rooms. The croupiers and dealers nodded to him genially; those of the “guests” Whom he knew did likewise. He was treated with marked courtesy and consideration by every attendant in the establishment. Everything was exactly as it had been on his previous visits. There were the soft mellow lights; the siren pur of the roulette wheel, the musical _click_ of the ball as it spun around on its little fateful orbit; the low, quiet voices of the croupiers and dealers; the well-dressed players grouped around the tables, the hilarious and the grim, the devil-may-care laugh from one, the thin smile from another. It was exactly the same, all exactly the same, even to the table in the supper room, free to all though laden with every wine and delicacy that money could procure; but somehow, even at the end of half an hour, where he was wont to be engrossed till daylight, John Bruce became excessively bored. Perhaps it was because he was simply an on-looker, and not playing himself. He had drawn close to a group around a faro bank. The play was grim earnest and for high stakes. No, it wasn't that! He did not want to play. Somehow, rather, he knew a slight sense both of contempt and disgust at the eager clutch and grasp of hands, the hoarse, short laugh of victory, the snarl of defeat, the trembling fingers of the more timorous who staked with Chance and demanded that the god be charitable in its omnipotence and toss them crumbs! Well, what was he caviling about? It was the life he had chosen. It was his life work. Wasn't he pleased with it? He had certainly liked it well enough in the old days to squander upon it the fair-sized fortune his father had left him. He decidedly had not gone into that infernal compact with Larmon blindfolded. Perhaps it was because in those days he played when he wanted to; and in these, and hereafter, he would play because he had to. Perhaps it was only that, to-night, there was upon him the feeling, which was natural enough, and which was immeasurably human too, that it was irksome to be a slave, to be fettered and shackled and bound to anything, even to what one, with one's freedom his own, was ordinarily out of choice most prone to do and delight in. Well, maybe! But that was not entirely a satisfactory or conclusive solution either. He looked around him. There seemed to be something hollow to-night in these trappings of tinsel; and something not only hollow, but sardonic in his connection with them--that he should act as a monitor over the honesty of those who in turn acted as the agents of Larmon in an already illicit traffic. “Oh, hell!” said John Bruce suddenly. The dealer looked up from the table, surprise mingling with polite disapproval. Several of the players screwed around their heads. “That's what I say!” snarled one of the latter with an added oath, as a large stack of chips was swept away from him.