He called a waiter at the end of the room to bring him a brandy and soda, and meanwhile I was surrounded by the rest of the men, all of them repeating the Viscount's suggestion of a 'revanche,' and strenuously urging upon me the necessity of returning to the club the next night in order to give them an opportunity of winning back what they had lost. I readily agreed, and while we were in the midst of talk, Lucio suddenly addressed young Lynton. "Will you make up another game with me?" he inquired. "I'll start the bank with this,"--and he placed two crisp notes of five hundred pounds each on the table. There was a moment's silence. The Viscount was thirstily drinking his brandy-and-soda, and glanced over the rim of his tall tumbler at the notes with covetous bloodshot eyes,--then he shrugged his shoulders indifferently. "I can't stake anything," he said; "I've already told you I'm cleaned out,--'stony-broke,' as the slang goes. It's no use my joining." "Sit down, sit down, Lynton!" urged one man near him. "I'll lend you enough to go on with." "Thanks, I'd rather not!" he returned, flushing a little. "I'm too much in your debt already. Awfully good of you all the same. You go on, you fellows, and I'll watch the play." "Let me persuade you Viscount Lynton," said Lucio, looking at him with his dazzling inscrutable smile--"just for the fun of the thing! If you do not feel justified in staking money, stake something trifling and merely nominal, for the sake of seeing whether the luck will turn"--and here he took up a counter--"This frequently represents fifty pounds,--let it represent for once something that is not valuable like money,--your soul, for example!" A burst of laughter broke from all the men. Lucio laughed softly with them. "We all have, I hope, enough instruction in modern science to be aware that there is no such thing as a soul in existence"--he continued. "Therefore, in proposing it as a stake for this game at baccarat, I really propose less than one hair of your head, because the hair is a something, and the soul is a nothing! Come! Will you risk that non-existent quantity for the chance of winning a thousand pounds?" The Viscount drained off the last drop of brandy, and turned upon us, his eyes flushing mingled derision and defiance. "Done!" he exclaimed; whereupon the party sat down. The game was brief,--and in its rapid excitement, almost breathless. Six or seven minutes sufficed, and Lucio rose, the winner. He smiled as he pointed to the counter which had represented Viscount Lynton's last stake.