“Just this once let me lean on you, and it shall be the last. I cannot be your wife. I must not. Miss Percy will tell you why. Oh, Fred, I do not mind telling you, now that it is all over, that I do love you and always shall; but it cannot be.” He did not at all understand her. He only knew she had called him Fred and declared her love for him. Nothing else mattered, even if the heavens fell. Neither Miss Percy nor mortal man should take her from him; and he kissed her passionately again and again, while he tried to find what had affected her so strangely. She managed to tell him at last, while he listened, surprised and shocked, but with his love in no sense abated for the girl, who, while telling him all was over between them, clung to him as a drowning man clings to a straw. Brant Percy had been his best boy friend. They had been in school together for two years in Germany. They had travelled over Europe, and been together at Yale until Brant, who never cared much for books, left college and gave himself to the life which ended in his tragic death. The last letter he ever wrote was addressed to Fred from Butte. “The gamest place out,” he said, “and no end of fun with the fellows who think they know something about play. You must not tell Blanche that I have backslidden. I promised her I would not touch a card while I was gone, and I have not till I came here, where there is so much of it that I caught the infection again, and it _is_ a disease which comes upon me with such force that I cannot resist the temptation. I have been pretty lucky, and last night tried my hand with an expert, Tom Crary, who is looked upon as a champion player. Some say that the devil helps him; others, that he is Satan himself, capable of seeing what his opponent holds, and playing accordingly. But if so he is a very fascinating Satan; in short, a perfect gentleman, with a face like a saint and manners as winsome as a woman’s. I challenged him last night, and the look of surprise he gave me was much like the look Goliath must have given David when he saw the stripling coming out to fight with him. He didn’t seem to want to play with me—evidently thought me too small fry for his net. But I insisted, and won, too, much more than I lost. He did not appear to care, and said to me, ‘Well, my boy, we are quits now. I hope you are satisfied. Better let cards alone while you are in luck.’ That just fired my blood. I am not a boy, and I was not satisfied. It was something to beat Tom Crary as I had done, and to-night we try it again. He held off and said he’d had enough, till I hinted that he was afraid because I knew some points of which he was ignorant. Then he consented, and if I am not richer to-morrow by at least a thousand, and maybe more, my name is not Brant Percy.”