"What," he asked with an ingenious smile, "is the maximum?"

"Seein's it's you," said the croupier, grinning, "we'll make it twenty
a throw."

"Such being the case"--P. Sybarite pushed back the little army of
white chips--"you may give me twenty dark-brown counters for
these...."

In ten minutes he had lost two hundred dollars.

At the end of twenty minutes, he exchanged his last thirty-five
dollars for seven brown chips.

Ten minutes later, he was worth eighteen hundred dollars; in another
ten, he had before him counters calling for five thousand or
thereabouts.

"It is," he observed privately--"it must be my Day of Days!"

A hand touched his shoulder, and a quiet voice said: "Beg pardon--"

He looked up with a slight start--that wasn't one of joyous welcome,
because the speaker was altogether a stranger--to find at his elbow a
large body of man entirely surrounded by evening clothes and urbanity;
whose face was broad with plump cheeks particularly clean-shaven;
whose eyes were keen and small and twinkling; whose fat hand (offered
to P. Sybarite) was strikingly white and dimpled and well-manicured;
whose dignity and poise (alike inimitable) combined with the