“My dear Miss Rosselli, that’s what everyone says here,” he laughed. “But before you’ve been on the Riviera long you’ll discover that this is no place for good resolutions. Gambling is one of the sweetest and most insidious of vices, and has the additional attraction of being thought chic. Look at the crowd of women here! Why, every one of them play. If they didn’t, others would believe them to be hard up--and poverty, you know, is distinctly bad form here. Even if a woman hasn’t sufficient to pay her hotel bill she must wear the regulation gold chatelaine,--the gold chain-purse,--if it only contains a couple of pieces of a hundred sous. And she must play. Fortunes have been won with only five francs.” “Such stories, I fear, are only fairy tales,” I said incredulously. “No. At least one of them is not,” he answered, blowing a cloud of smoke from his lips and looking at me amusedly. “I was playing here one night last March when a young French girl won three hundred thousand francs after having first lost all she had. She borrowed a five-franc piece from a friend and with it broke the bank. I was present at the table where it occurred. Fortune is very fickle here.” “So it seems,” I said. “That is why I intend to keep what I’ve won.” “You might have a necklace made of the louis,” he said. “Many women wear coins won at Monte Carlo attached to their bangles.” “A happy thought!” I exclaimed; “I’ll have one put on my bangle to-morrow as a souvenir.” “Are you staying on the Riviera long?” he inquired presently. “I really don’t know. When Ulrica is tired of it, then we shall move down to Rome, I suppose.” “When she’s lost sufficient, you mean,” he smiled. “She’s quite reckless when she commences. I remember her here several seasons ago. She lost very heavily. Luck was entirely against her.” I too remembered her visit. She left me in Washington and went to the Riviera for a couple of months, and on her return was constantly bewailing her penury. This, then, was the secret of it. She had never revealed to me the truth. “And you think that I shall be stricken with the prevalent epidemic?” I inquired. “I hope not,” he answered quickly. “But after all, the temptation is utterly irresistible. It is sad, indeed, that here in this corner of God’s earth, which He has marked as the nearest approach to paradise, should be allowed to flaunt all the vices and the seven deadly sins which render the world horrible. Monte Carlo is the one blot upon the Riviera. I’m a gambler,--I make no secret of it, because I find resistance impossible while I have money in my pocket,--nevertheless, much as I like a fling here each winter I would gladly welcome the closing of the Casino. It is, alas! true that those red-carpeted steps and the wide doors opposite form the entrance-gate to hell.”