The bill, with tips, was twenty-four dollars and sixty cents, and with a sudden recollection of the forty-thousand-dollar order, Furniss reverted to type. With the usual inconsistency of a man who can lose large sums with apparent indifference, he raved and fumed at the loss of a penny. He raved and fumed all the afternoon at his office, and it was not until well after five that he made an unaccustomed appearance at the Quoits Club, still raging and fuming, with the only horror that a man of his type can ever know--the horror of losing money. Butley Smith was already at the Quoits Club, as Helen well knew he would be; but Furniss was an unaccustomed presence. He usually preferred the Racquets, where the stakes were worth playing, and his advent in this, the stronghold of strictly civil practice, made a commotion. The commotion, moreover, soon attracted the attention of Butley, who was straying through the tables looking for a partner. Now, Butley Smith was rated a magnificent card-player, which meant that he played auction like a stop-watch, and poker like a two-year-old child. The exact opposite was true, by reputation, of Furniss, and at sight of him in the stronghold of his own followers, who demanded his redemption, Butley had a sudden golden inspiration. He ceased biting his lip, and his time was bid. He would beard the lion in his den, and beard him he did. “Furniss,” he said, “are you busy?” Furniss looked up in perplexity. “Suppose,” continued Butley, “that we throw a few hands of poker.” Butley was right. With Furniss of Fitchly that was indeed an audacious suggestion to give, but, brooding on the circumstances of the last two months, in the minds of the Quoits Club it instantly assumed Homeric proportions. The turn of a card, the fall of a die, a woman’s honor--there was a romance about it that struck clear home to their devilishness; a veritable thrill went among them. Only Furniss was mystified; but, then, he was a devil, and naturally did not know how it felt to be devilish. But he saw light--his own light, a light that is not on land or sea, only in the waters under the earth. “I’m on,” he said, and Butley dealt. In a crowded club-room at five o’clock in the afternoon a two-handed game would ordinarily have been a monstrosity, but this was no ordinary contest. It was a fight to the very death, and without a word the spectators gathered at the only points where it is proper for spectators to gather in a poker-game--without a word and without a suggestion to join. I want to do justice to that game, but the truth is that Butley did not win a single hand--or just one in the early part. “I raise you four,” said Furniss as the clock struck six. Butley glanced at his hand. “It’s yours,” he said sadly, and regretfully laid down three jacks, while Furniss rapidly shuffled an ace high into the pack and looked at his watch.