"No," he said. "I stick. If the game's got you, it's got me too--to the
limit. There's no use talking about that."

The Flopper licked his lips miserably.

"Swipe me!" he mumbled. "Hell wasn't never like dis! Me an' Mamie we've
got it fixed, an' her old man says he'll take me inter de store. Say,
Doc, say--ain't dere a chanst ter live straight now we wants ter?"

But Madison did not hear the Flopper save in a vague, inconsequential
way--he was looking at Helena. She had drooped forward a little over the
table, her chin in her hands, her lips quivering--and a white misery in
her face seemed to bring a chill, a numbness to his heart. His Hands
clenched, and he began to pace up and down the room.

How buoyantly he had tackled the problem--buoyant in his own
emancipation, buoyant in his love, in the future full of dreams, full of
inspiration, full of the new life that Helena and he would live
together! How confidently he had settled himself to undo in a moment the
work of months, to outline a mere matter of detail, with never a thought
that he was face to face with a problem that he could never solve--that
brought him to the realization that the game, not he, was the master
still, iron-handed, implacable--that though the mental chains were
loosed it was but as if, in ironic justice, in grim punishment, only
that he might look, clear-visioned, upon the ignominy of the physical
shackles he himself had forged and fashioned so readily, whose breaking
now was beyond his strength.

He had done his work well! In the first few moments, an hour ago, when