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."

So Tony himself must have been playing at the tables every night! Ann made
no comment, but glanced in the direction of the woman indicated. She was
rather a striking-looking woman, no longer young, with a clever, mobile