"
"It's so nice and cool up here," she whispered back. "I don't believe it
is half so cool in the garden!"
She gazed down into his upturned face with innocent coquetry,
pretending--only pretending--to hesitate as to what she would do in
answer to his invitation.
But Sylvia Bailey was but an amateur at the Great Game, the game at which
only two--only a man and a woman--can play, and yet which is capable of
such infinite, such bewilderingly protean variations. So her next move,
one which Paul de Virieu, smiling behind his moustache, foresaw--was to
turn away from the window.
She ran down the broad shallow staircase very quickly, for it had
occurred to her that the Count, taking her at her word, might leave the
garden, and, sauntering off to the Casino, lose his money--for whatever
he might be in love, Count Paul was exceedingly unlucky at cards! And
lately she had begun to think that she was gradually weaning her friend
from what she knew to be in his case, whatever it was in hers, and in
that of many of the people about them, the terrible vice of gambling.
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