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Febrer spent the rest of the afternoon reading the letter or strolling about the environs of the tower, deeply stirred by this news. Recollections of his past existence, dimmed by his rural and solitary life, stood out now with the same vividness as if they were the events of yesterday. The cafés on the Borne, his friends in the Casino!

The heavy clouds that cast shadows of purple and reddish-brown on the sea have descended in a thunderstorm, lasting continuously for eight hours. Sky and sea vie in the production of larger expanse of undimmed blue. The well-ordered garden by the Casino is sweet with the breath of roses and heliotrope. The lawns have the fresh green look that we islanders associate with earliest summer.

I had no time to lose, for I had no casino. I took a second rower so as to reach St. Mark's Square more rapidly, and I immediately set to work looking for what I wanted. When a mortal is so lucky as to be in the good graces of the god Plutus, and is not crackbrained, he is pretty sure to succeed in everything: I had not to search very long before I found a casino suiting my purpose exactly.

"Now for that advance on your secretarial work," he said; and taking from his pocket a wad of notes which he had won at the Casino, he stuffed it hastily into the yawning mouth of the bag, while the girl's soft eyes gazed at the sea. Then he closed the spring with a snap, and she let him pass the chain over her hand once more. "Oh, but it looks very fat," she exclaimed.

They touch a chord... Lest this confession raise false hopes in the reader, I add that I did not know their owner. I did once see her, and in Normandy, and by moonlight, and her name was Ange'lique. She was graceful, she was even beautiful. I was but nineteen years old. Yet even so I cannot say that she impressed me favourably. I was seated at a table of a cafe' on the terrace of a casino.

Antonia assented with a nod of her head, breaking into speech in her Majorcan dialect. "It is hard, isn't it? No doubt the bread does not compare with the tender little rolls the señor eats at the casino, but it is not my fault. I wanted to make bread yesterday, but I was out of flour, and I was expecting that the 'payés' of Son Febrer would come and bring his tribute.

It would be quite easy to find Anna, or so she thought, for Anna would be at the Casino. Sylvia felt painfully interested in her friend's love of gambling. It was so strange that Anna was not ashamed of it.

The visitors find at its Casino all the best newspapers and magazines of civilization laid out for their amusement, to which are added an excellent theatre, an unsurpassed orchestra, and 'pour comble de malheur' open tables at which any stranger can play at roulette, or at trente-et-quarante, upon presentation of a card of address.

The grass and trees and flowers in the Place of the Casino looked twice as unreal as before, all theatrically vivid in colour, and extraordinarily flat, as if cut out of painted cardboard against a background of gauze.

He has refused to live in the villa at Cap Martin with his brother and sister-in-law, who have now arrived, because he hates to be too far from the Casino, though perhaps they may not know why. Monsieur Carleton has told Madame that not once have they been inside its doors, or shown themselves at any Monte Carlo restaurant.