"How's that?" said Penfield, staring.

"You couldn't have won against me to-night," P. Sybarite ingenuously
explained; "it could _not_ be done: I am invincible: it
is--_Kismet_!--my Day of Days!"

Penfield laughed discordantly.

"Maybe it looks that way to you. But aren't you a little premature?
You haven't banked that wad yet, you know. Any minute something might
happen to make you think otherwise."

"Nothing like that is going to happen," P. Sybarite retorted with calm
conviction. "The luck's with me at present!"

"And yet," said the other, abandoning his easy pose and sitting up
with a sharpened glance and tone, "you are wrong--quite wrong."

"What makes you think that?" demanded P. Sybarite, finishing his
second glass.

"Because," said his host with a dangerous smile, "I am a desperate
man."

"Oh?" said P. Sybarite thoughtfully.

"Believe me," insisted the other with convincing simplicity: "I'm such
a bum loser, I'm willing to stake my last five hundred on the
proposition that you don't leave this house a dollar richer than you
entered it."