“You’ll only get licked,” he said simply. “Whatever sort of a player you may make some day, and if you go on trying I suppose you will do all right in time, you’re not strong enough to play with old hands like me and the two others who were with us to-day.” Mrs. Van Santen shrugged her shoulders. “It’s an almighty shame to play cards all Sunday!” she said, in her homely way. “I wonder you’re not ashamed of yourself, Denver, to start it!” “Well, so I am, perhaps,” said he good-humoredly; “but I love cards, and if anyone else wants to play, I’m ready to take him on, you bet!” Miss Davison, seated near Mrs. Van Santen, was sipping tea and nibbling bread and butter. Gerard, when the other two young men grew warm in discussion of poker and moved away a little, took the seat beside her. “Different this, from the way the Aldingtons spend their Sunday!” said he, in a low voice as soon as their hostess had turned to talk to someone else. “Yes,” said Rachel. “It’s rather shocking--till you get used to it.” “I think it would always seem shocking to me,” said Gerard. “I don’t think I have any strong Sabbatarian instincts, but I suppose the old Puritan survives in us English, for I must confess that to see cards played all day on Sunday grates upon me; and I should have thought,” he added quickly, in a lower voice, “that it would have grated on you too.” This home-thrust made her blush. “One has to make allowance,” she said, “for other people’s ways. It’s quite true, as you say, that one’s Puritan instincts revolt from the continual card-playing; but I suppose that very strict people would say it’s just as wrong to amuse oneself as one does at the Aldingtons’, with music and conversation.” “I don’t see how there could be the same objection to that.” “It’s only a question of degree.” “So that you really wouldn’t mind if we all, at the Aldingtons’, were to sit down to poker and baccarat, instead of spending the Sundays there as we do?” She turned to him quickly. “I really don’t see that we are called upon to decide those questions,” she said. “Each one must lay down his own laws of conduct. As a matter of fact, it’s a sentiment, and not any law, human or divine, that guides us in the matter, isn’t it? You can’t pretend that card-playing comes under the head of work, can you?” Stung by what he took to be her indifference, Gerard made a very indiscreet speech. “Work! I’m not so sure of that,” said he. Miss Davison turned to him quickly. “Pray, what do you mean?” she asked sharply. But he did not venture to say more. Indeed, he felt that he had nothing to say. He could not well have defined the secret instinct which made him vaguely suspect that there was something wrong about the play, just because Miss Davison was in the house at the time.