The first question Mary asked on coming downstairs in the morning was, "At what hour does the Casino open?"

Ten o'clock, she was told.

It was not yet nine. A long time to wait!

Most people at the Paris breakfasted in their rooms, but never in her life had Mary eaten breakfast in her bedroom. She went to last night's table in the great glass window of the restaurant, and was hardly sure whether she felt relieved or disappointed not to see the young man with the Dante profile. She did not now think him in the least like Romeo.

From the window, to her surprise, she saw a crowd collecting in front of the Casino, whose doors were still closed.

"What is the matter?" she asked, almost alarmed, lest there had been an accident.

"It is the early ones waiting for the doors to open," her waiter explained. He brought her a poached egg on toast, but a superlative egg, poached and adorned according to the conception of a French chef. The air with which the silver cover was taken off and the dish shown to Mary made her feel there was nothing she could do to show her appreciation, without disappointing the man, unless she bent down and kissed the egg passionately. Her smile seemed inadequate, and she ate with a worried fear of seeming ungrateful, especially as she was impelled to hurry, lest those people in front of the Casino should take all the places at the tables. She wanted to sit down to gamble, for the strenuous game she had played last night, with many stakes, would be impossible when stretching over people's heads.

By half-past nine she was in the crowd, all her money, with the exception of two hundred pounds she had put by, crushed into her big beaded hand-bag. She remembered how at Aberdeen the night she went to the theatre people stood like this, patiently waiting for the pit-door to open. What did she not remember about that, her first and only visit to a theatre?

At last the Casino doors yawned, as if they disliked waking up. The procession rolled toward them, like a determined and vigorous python. Mary was carried ahead with the rush. She had forgotten that she ought to have renewed her ticket, but fortunately she was not asked for it; and as she had come without a wrap, there was nothing to turn her aside from the rooms.

Once across the threshold of the big Salle Schmidt, the struggle began. It was not only the young and agile who raced each other to the tables. Men who looked as if they might have pulled one foot from the grave in order to reach the Casino, hobbled wildly across the slippery floor. Fat elderly ladies waddled with indomitable speed, like women tied up in bags for an obstacle race; and an invalid gentleman, a famous player, with his attendant—the first to get in—was swept along in a small bath chair ahead of the crowd, an expression of fierce exhilaration on a gaunt face white as bleached bone. But the young and healthy gamblers had an advantage, especially those with long legs.

Only yesterday Mary would have let herself be passed by every one, rather than push into a place which somebody else wanted. Now, however, the gambler's fever was in her. Whatever happened, she must get a seat at the table where she had played last night. To do so was the most important thing on earth. Slender and tall and long-limbed, she ran like a young Diana; though not since she had become Sister Rose had she ever been undignified enough to run. Straight as an arrow she aimed for the table she wanted, and convulsively seized the back of the last unclaimed chair. It was grasped at the same instant by a young man of rather distinguished appearance, who would in other circumstances no doubt have yielded place to a woman, especially a young and pretty girl. But he too had the gambler's fever. He struggled with Mary for the chair, and would have secured it by superior strength if she had not dropped limply into it as he drew it out for himself.

"Well done!" muttered a woman already settled in a neighbouring seat. "That's one of the Pretenders to the throne of Portugal."

Instead of being overawed, Mary found herself laughing in the joy of her triumph. "He can't have this throne, anyhow," she panted, out of breath.

Then she noticed that Lord Dauntrey was with her defeated rival. He had secured a chair, but getting up, gave it to the royal personage, who was his paying guest at the Villa Bella Vista. Lord Dauntrey had not seen, or had not recognized, Mary. He appeared to be more alive than he had been before, almost a different man. Though his features were stonily calm as the features of a mask, Mary felt that he was intensely excited, and completely absorbed in the game about to begin. He had a notebook over which his sleek brown head and Dom Ferdinand de Trevanna's short black curls were bent eagerly. It was evident that they had some plan of play which they were working out together.

It was just as thrilling, Mary thought, to be in the Casino by day as by night, and even more interesting now, because she knew how to play, instead of having to depend upon Madame d'Ambre. She had feared that her too solicitous friend might be lying in wait for her this morning, but she need have had no anxiety. Madeleine never appeared before noon. Perhaps she might have made a superhuman effort had there been reasonable hope of anything to gain. But Madame d'Ambre had learned to read faces: and Mary's had told her that for a time there was nothing more to expect. She would be comfortably lazy while her money held out.

Mary's seat was near the spinner, one of the croupiers who had seen her sensational wins twelve hours ago. He smiled recognition. "Take zero again, and the neighbours," he mumbled cautiously. "I'll try and make you win."

Mary wanted to know what "neighbours" meant, and was told hastily that they were the numbers lying nearest to zero on the wheel.

"But I feel as if twenty-four would come," she objected.

"Very well, if Mademoiselle prefers twenty-four, I will see what I can do," replied the obliging croupier, like most of his fellow-spinners wishing to give the impression that he could control the ball.

Twenty-four did not respond to his efforts, but twenty-two was the first number spun, and as Mary had staked maximums on everything surrounding her number, she won heavily. Throughout the whole morning luck still favoured her. She lost sometimes, and her wins were not as sensational as those of last night, but they made people stare and talk, and added so many notes to the troublesome contents of her bag that, to the amusement of everybody, when the time came to go she stuffed gold and paper into the long gloves she had taken off while playing. Both gloves were full and bulged out in queer protuberances, like Christmas stockings. But this was not until nearly two o'clock, when Mary had grown so hungry that she could no longer concentrate her thoughts upon the game. Meanwhile, different relays of croupiers and inspectors had come and gone, and the crowd round the table had changed. Very few remained of the players who had raced for chairs at the opening hour. Many had lost and taken themselves off, discouraged; others had a habit of darting from table to table "for luck"; some had won as much as they wanted to win, and departed quietly as a man goes home from his office. But among the few faithful ones were Lord Dauntrey and his royal friend, who was stared at a good deal, and evidently recognized. By this time Lord Dauntrey had noticed Mary, his attention being attracted to her by Dom Ferdinand, but as he had not been introduced to the girl in the train, he did not bow. The excitement had died from his face, leaving it gray as the ashes in a burnt-out fire, and his cheeks looked curiously loose on the bones, as if his muscles had fallen away underneath. Mary had not taken time to watch his game, but she saw that most of the silver and gold once neatly piled in front of the two players had disappeared, and she was afraid that they had lost a good deal. It seemed unnecessary and almost stupid to her that people should lose. She did not see why every one could not play as she did.

As she reluctantly rose to go away, driven by hunger, she had to pass close to Dom Ferdinand and Lord Dauntrey. There was no crowd round the chairs, as the morning throng had thinned for dÉjeuner, and she heard Lord Dauntrey say: "I assure you, Monseigneur, it never went as badly as this on my roulette at home. You saw the records. But nobody can win at every sÉance. Don't be discouraged. I'm confident my system's unbreakable in the end."

It was half-past two when Mary began luncheon, and she had to finish in a hurry when Schuyler and Carleton called for her with the motor-car. She was sorry that she had promised to look at anything so irrelevant as an aeroplane, and felt nervously irritable because she could not at once go back to her game. She could almost hear the Casino calling her in a musical, golden voice: "I have something nice to give you. Why don't you come and take it?" But it was interesting to tell the two men about her luck of the morning. Each detail of the play was so fascinating to her that she would hardly have believed it possible for the story to bore any one else. She did not ask a single question about the remarkable hydro-aeroplane in which Carleton was to compete for an important prize next week; nor did she see the pitying smile the men exchanged while she entertained them with an exact account of how she had staked, what she had lost, and what she had won. "Poor child!" the look said. But neither man blamed the girl for her selfish absorption. Both understood the phase very well, and it was not long since Carleton had lived it down, thanks to some friendly brutality on Jim's part. As for Schuyler, though he never played at the Casino, it was because he had played too often when a younger man, in America. Roulette and trente et quarante bored him now, though the great game in Wall Street still had power over his nerves, when he was in the thick of it. One reason that he avoided society at Monte Carlo and invited few people to his house was because the constant babble about the "Rooms" and the "tables" exhausted his vitality, making him feel, as he said, "like a field-mouse in a vacuum." Sometimes it had seemed to him that, if once again he heard any one say, "Oh, if only I had played on seventeen!" he would be forced to strike the offender, or rush away in self-defence.

Already Mary's eyes were losing the starlike clearness of their delight in all things novel or beautiful. They looked mistily introspective, as if they were studying some combination going on in the brain behind them; and when she could not talk about roulette she relapsed at once into absent-mindedness. But even her absorbed interest in the new pursuit was not proof against the hydro-aeroplane lurking in its hangar. It looked wonderful, yet she could not believe that it was able really to rise out of the water into air.

"I assure you it does, though, and it can run on land, too," said Carleton, eagerly. "Surely you must have read of Glenn Curtiss and his Triad, that made such a sensation in America? You can ask Jim. He saw my first successful experiment in the Hudson River six weeks ago."

"And one or two unsuccessful ones, too," laughed Jim. "But I really think, Miss Grant, that Carleton's got his pet dragon into pretty good training now, both as a land and water and air animal. I shouldn't wonder if we'd see something worth seeing nest week at Nice?—and it will be new on this coast, for there've been no hydro-aeroplanes tried here before."

"Next week?" echoed Mary. "Shan't I see anything now? I thought Mr. Carleton meant to go up in the air to-day."

"I hadn't thought of it, but I will if you like. That is, I'll try," said Carleton, modestly.

"I—oh, how I should love to go with you!" Mary exclaimed. "Can you carry people?"

"One passenger at a time, yes. You wouldn't really like it, would you?" he asked, flushing under the compliment of her trust in him, and admiring her pluck. "You don't mean that you'd go up with me?"

"I would if you'd take me." Her eyes were shining once more. "It would be—like all one's most marvellous dreams come true."

"You wouldn't be afraid?"

"Oh, no, not with you."

This was delicious flattery. Carleton promptly fell in love with Mary. Not to have done so would have been base ingratitude. No woman had ever paid him so great a compliment. He had thought her bewilderingly pretty before. Now she was the most beautiful woman in the world.

"You're the bravest girl on earth!" he exclaimed, ardently.

"Better leave her on earth, then," Schuyler said dryly. "We need brave women."

"There's no danger," Carleton protested with indignation. "Do you think I'd take her, if I thought there were?"

"Not if you thought there were. And I don't say there is. But Miss Grant's here without her people——"

"I have no people," Mary cut him short. "Because you can't count aunts, can you, especially if they dislike you very much?"

Both men laughed.

"I must be your passenger," she said. "Now I've seen the hydro-aeroplane, I shan't eat or sleep till I've been up in it."

Carleton looked at his host. "You know, at worst she could only get a wetting if I kept over the sea," he said. "And very likely the Flying Fish will be cranky and refuse to rise."

"Here's hoping!" mumbled Schuyler. He did not define the exact nature of his hope, but offered no further objections.

Mary, seeing that she was to have her wish, was anxious to start at once, and almost surprised at herself for her own courage. But Carleton explained that she could not "make an ascent," as he laconically called it, dressed as she was. She must have a small, close fitting hat, and a veil to tie it firmly down, also a heavy wrap. He had an oilskin coat which he could lend her, to put over it. Mary was not, however, to be turned from her desire by small obstacles. She had no very thick coat, but knew where to buy a lovely moleskin, very long, down to her feet. She could secure it and be ready in ten minutes if Mr. Schuyler would send her up the hill in his car. Permission was granted and she went spinning off with the chauffeur, both Schuyler and Carleton awaiting her return at the hangar, down on the beach by the harbour.

The "ten minutes" prolonged themselves to twenty, and while they were slowly passing, three men who had been on the Rock, writing their names in the visitors' book at the palace, came strolling down the long flight of paved steps to the harbour. One of these was Captain Hannaford. The other Englishman was also an officer, Major Norwood, who had known Hannaford long ago. And the third member of the party was the Maharajah of Indorwana, an extremely troublesome young Indian royalty who was "seeing Europe" under the guardianship of his reluctant bear leader, Norwood. Since the pair had landed at Marseilles, three weeks ago, Norwood had passed scarcely a peaceful moment by night or day. His authority over his charge was officially absolute; but in practise it could only be enforced by violence, which the unfortunate officer had not yet brought himself to exert. If he did not wish the Maharajah (who was twenty and had never before been out of his native land) to fall into some new mischief every hour, he was obliged to find for the youth a ceaseless succession of amusements. Monte Carlo was to have been but the affair of a day. The Maharajah, however, had decided differently. He liked the place, and firmly refused to move. The two had now been staying for a week at the Metropole, and Major Norwood had telegraphed to the India Office in London for instructions.

The night before, he had been dragged by his charge to three dances at open-all-night restaurants, where professionals entertained the audience. The Maharajah had insisted on learning to dance, his instructress being an attractive Russian girl; then, as the fun grew furious, he had forgotten his eastern dignity, and pirouetted for a wager, with a valuable jar containing a palm. This jar he had promptly broken, and had not been conciliatory to the proprietor. At five o'clock he had driven his own car—bought at Marseilles—to Nice, full to overflowing with his late partners. There had been a slight accident, and to console the girls for their fright the Maharajah had divided all his ready money among them. Since then he had had one fight with a German, whom he had jostled, and who had called him a black man. Major Norwood had been obliged to use the most nerve-racking exertions to keep his princeling out of a French prison. Slightly subdued, the Maharajah had consented to call at the palace at Monaco, to walk through the beautiful gardens on the Rock with Hannaford, and to visit the Fish Museum; but there was a yearning for new excitements in his dangerous dark eyes, and Norwood had been thankful to see Carleton the airman standing on the beach by his hangar. The two Americans were introduced to the Indian royalty, and Carleton, not too eagerly, had just begun to explain the features of his Flying Fish, when the big blue car brought Miss Grant back.

At sight of Mary in a newly bought motor-bonnet, the Maharajah's eyes lit up. He had seen her the night before at the Casino, and had started the applause after her first sensational win. Now he asked to be introduced, and Major Norwood's weary heart sank. Judging from the expression of the plump olive face, this was going to be another case of infatuation, and already there had been one on the ship, and one at Cannes, both of which had necessitated the most delicate diplomacy. The Maharajah was passionately fond of jewels, and had brought with him from home some of the finest in his collection, which he intended to wear in London. But on board ship he had given an emerald worth five hundred pounds to the pretty young wife of an old Indian judge, who could not resist accepting it; and at Cannes he had bestowed a diamond aigrette on a second-rate actress. Major Norwood had tried to get these valuables back, in vain; and now felt symptoms of heart failure whenever his charge looked at a beautiful woman.

The Maharajah had an extraordinarily winning manner, however, almost like that of a dignified child, and his way of speaking English was engaging. Mary had never seen an East Indian before, and was much interested to meet one. She gave him her prettiest smiles and looks, while the other men stood round her, each secretly annoyed to see her treating a "black fellow" as if he were the equal of a European.

"I'm hanged if I'll stand on ceremony with the chap, if he is some kind of potentate," Carleton grumbled; and, interrupting the conversation, asked Mary if she were of the same mind about being his passenger for a flight.

"Of course!" she answered. But Carleton had not yet stepped into the hangar when Prince Vanno Della Robbia passed on foot, going to the palace on the Rock.

He had returned to his hotel after lunching with the curÉ, had dressed and, as he was told there might be a small revolution in progress at Monaco—something worth seeing—he had started out to walk.

The revolution of Monegasques demanding the vote seemed after all not to be taking place that day; but if Vanno missed the miniature warlike demonstration he had been promised, at least his walk was not uneventful. Noticing a group round Carleton's hangar on the beach, he drew nearer, and to his astonishment saw Mary in a long coat of moleskin, and a little red motor-bonnet, surrounded by five men, one of them the somewhat notorious Maharajah of Indorwana. Vanno retreated hastily, and went on toward the steps which led up to the Rock of Monaco; but he had not gone far when a combination of sounds stopped him: the whirr of a propeller and the throb of an engine. Carleton was evidently on the point of trying his machine, the curious invention which could be used, it was said, on land as well as in air and on the water.

Vanno looked back, and saw a biplane on wheels, fitted with a kind of float. It was moving out of the hangar, down an inclined plane that bridged the beach as far as the water's edge. In the aviator's seat sat Dick, and behind him the red motor-bonnet was decorative as a flower.

She was going with Carleton! Vanno had hardly time to realize that he had seen her, before the hydro-aeroplane ran, rather than plunged, into the water. It ploughed deeply and almost painfully for the first moment, sending up a great spout of foam like an immense plume of spun glass; but as Carleton increased the speed daringly, his Flying Fish rose higher on the little waves, the float barely skimming the surface of the water. The aviator tilted the control, as if to watch the action, and suddenly, to the amazement of all the spectators, what had been an unusual looking double-decked motor-boat sprang out of the harbour into the air. It rose gracefully and gradually to a height of perhaps four hundred feet, flying as if it aimed straight for the far-distant pearl-cluster of Bordighera, on the Italian coast.

Vanno had an extraordinary sensation, as if his heart stopped beating, and as if at the same time an iron band across his chest stopped the expansion of his lungs. It was such a sensation as a man might have in the moment of death, and it was so unlike anything he had ever felt before that, for a few seconds of physical agony, he asked himself dazedly what was the matter. Then, suddenly, he knew that he was afraid—afraid for the girl. And he hated Carleton for risking her life. He felt a savage longing to do the young airman some bodily injury as a punishment for what he, Vanno, was made to suffer.

The relief was so great when the Flying Fish dropped slowly down and settled again into the water that Vanno was slightly giddy with the rush of blood through his veins. He watched the hydro-aeroplane turn and head back for the mouth of Monaco harbour; and it seemed to him that he had lived through years in a few minutes, as one can have a lifetime's experience in one short dream. He sickened as he thought what would be his feelings now if the machine had fallen and turned over, too far off for any hope of rescue from land. If those "eyes like stars" had been closed until eternity, with no hope that he could ever learn the secret of the soul behind them, nothing the future might have to give could make up for the loss. It was only when the Flying Fish swam safely into the harbour that Vanno remembered his irritation at seeing Mary with all those men, the only woman among them. After what he had gone through since then, this annoyance seemed a ridiculously small thing; but no sooner was she on land again, received with acclamations from her new friends and applause by the crowd which had quickly collected, than Vanno felt the same tingling anger.

The girl was making herself notorious! At this rate she would be talked of everywhere. Strangers would snapshot her as she passed. Her picture would be for sale on one of those Monte Carlo postcards of celebrities which were newly taken every day; she would be in the local English illustrated newspaper. He walked off quickly, with his head down, so as to lose himself in the crowd and not be seen by Mary or her companions.

She was pale as a drowned girl when Carleton and Hannaford helped her out of the oilskin which had protected her new fur cloak; and never, perhaps, had she been so beautiful. There was something unearthly about her, as if she had seen a vision and the blinding light of it still shone white upon her face. As he touched her, Hannaford felt a thrill as of new life go through him. By his own wild recklessness he had spoilt his career and put himself, so he believed, beyond the pale of any woman's love. He had thought that he had trained himself not to care; but in that instant, while Mary, dazed by her vision, almost hung in his arms and Carleton's, he knew that he was as other men. He wondered why last night she had meant no more to him than a pretty new face at Monte Carlo, a rather amusing problem which would soon lose its abstruse charm. It was like tearing out a live nerve to feel that she could think of him only with disgust or maybe horror. Yet he knew that, now he had seen her face with the wonderful light on it, he would have to try and win something from her, if only pity. The idea came to him that she and he, and these men with them, and Madeleine d'Ambre, and others who would gather round the beautiful and lucky player, were figures being woven into a web of tapestry together; that they were forced to group themselves as the weaver of the web decreed. He saw his own figure woven into an obscure and shadowy corner far from that of Mary, and, rebelling against the choice of the weaver, wished to tear the tapestry in pieces. But the next moment he was ready to smile at himself with the quiet, cynical smile which had become familiar to all those who knew him. "Nothing is tragic unless you think so," he said to himself. Yet he could not put out of his mind the fancy of the web with figure after figure being woven into it, against the background of sea and mountain. It was not unlike the idea which had come to Peter in a half-waking dream the night after Mary went away. And at the convent in the north of Scotland the same thought still came back to Peter, though no news had yet been received there from Monte Carlo.

"Were you afraid?" the Maharajah of Indorwana asked Mary, as the colour slowly flowed back to her face.

"No," she said, dreamily, "not afraid. But it was like dying and going to another world. When we were rushing through the water with the loud noise of machinery in our ears, and the glassy screen of spray over our heads, I lost my breath. I couldn't think clearly; but I supposed that was all. I couldn't believe we should go up. But then came the spring, and we were in the air, bounding higher—it was like something imagined after death. And the rest was being in heaven, till we began to drop. Then, just for a few seconds, it felt as if my body were falling and leaving my soul poised up there in the sky. I shall never forget—never. And when the time does come to die, I don't believe I shall mind now, for I know it will be like that, with the wonder of it after the shrinking is over."

Hannaford looked at her closely as she spoke. He was continually thinking of death as a dark room, behind a shut door which he would perhaps choose to open. He felt that he would like to talk to her some day about what she really expected to find on the other side of the door.

Nothing else was quite real to him in the scene, when everybody pressed round Carleton, congratulating him on his machine and the exploit of which the airman seemed to think little. It was not real when Schuyler invited Hannaford and his two companions to crowd into the big car, and be spun up the hill to Monte Carlo. He remembered the illumined look on Mary's face (though it was gone now) and the faint ray of hope it had sent into that secret place where his real self lived wearily.

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