Then she takes my arm and leads me from the sweet
night-air into the hot little room with its crowd around the
nine gyrating animals.
"I shall put it on 5. I always put on 5. He is a nice, clean,
white, pretty horse."
She stakes two francs, watches the turn in a tense agony of
excitement; she wins, comes running to me with sixteen francs
clutched tight in her hand.
"See. I said I should win."
"Come away then and be happy."
But she makes a protesting grimace, and before I can stop her,
runs back to stake again on 5. In twenty minutes she is ruined
and returns to me wearing an expression of abject misery. She is
too desolate even to try the fortune of the dinner-jacket pocket.
I take her outside and restore her to beatitude with grenadine
syrup and soda-water. She rejects the straws. With her elbows
on the marble table, the glass held in both hands, she drinks
sensuously, in little sips.
And I, Marcus Ordeyne, sit by watching her, a most contented
philosopher of forty. A dingo dog could not be so contented.
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