fun." Then, with friendly sympathy: "I'm afraid you've lost, though?"

He shrugged his shoulders.

"I'm used to losing," he replied indifferently.

Somehow, Ann felt as though he were not thinking only of his losses at the
tables. That note of bitterness in his voice sprang from some deeper
undercurrent.

"I'm so sorry," she said simply.

"I never expect to win," he returned curtly. "If you expect nothing, you're
never disappointed. Pray don't waste your sympathy."

The rudeness of the speech took her aback. Yet, sensing in its very
churlishness the sting of some old hurt, she answered him quietly, though
with heightened colour:

"If you expect nothing, you'll get nothing. That's one of the rules of the
road."

He checked himself in the act of turning away, and regarded her with a
mixture of contempt and amusement, much as one might smile at the
utterances of a child.

"Don't you think we get mostly what we're looking for?" she went on
courageously. "If you expect good things, they'll come to you, and if
you're expecting bad things, they'll come, too."