She flushed a little. This was the first occasion on which Tony had referred to the subject of gambling since the day they had gone up to the Dents de Loup together. She wondered if he had spoken deliberately, intending to remind her of the fact that, since she had refused to marry him, he was perfectly free to gamble if he chose. Yet he had spoken so casually, apparently quite without _arrière pensée_ that it almost appeared as though the memory of that day upon the mountain had been wiped out of his mind. He seemed unconscious of any _gêne_ in the situation. During Lady Susan's brief illness he had been in and out of the villa exactly as usual, bringing flowers, running errands, cheering them all up with his infectious good humour--spontaneously willing to do anything and everything that might help to tide over a difficult time. Now and again there flashed into Ann's mind the recollection of those few moments on the moonlit hill-side, when Tony's gravely steadfast face and proffered vow had made her think of him as some young knight of old, and she would ask herself whether she had done right or wrong in refusing him. But, for the most part, the episode seemed to her to be invested with a curious sense of unreality, an impression which was fostered by the apparently unforced naturalness of Tony's demeanour. And now she felt rather as though he were asserting his independence, his freedom to gamble. "Lose?" He picked up her words. "You've got to be _prepared_ to lose--at everything. The whole of life's a bit of a gamble, don't you think?" "No," she answered steadily. "I don't. Life's what you make it." The soft, slate-coloured eyes regarded her oddly. "Yours will be, I dare say. Mine will be regulated by Uncle Philip, presumably." His mouth twitched in a brief sneer. "It rather strikes me we make each other's lives." Then, as though trying to turn the conversation into a more impersonal channel: "Rum crowd here to-night, isn't it? See that woman sitting on your left? She looks as though she hadn't two sous to rub together, yet she's been losing at least five hundred francs each night this week. She covers the table with five-franc notes and loses consistently."