"I know all that. Don't mind."

"You knew it?" For the first time she looked at him, but she turned her
eyes away at once and stared at the oblong of dark framed by the
window. "Why--"

"Spaulding told me to-night only."

"Mother told me a week or so ago. She'd been recognized. Shortly after I
married, when she found out how the women played bridge and poker here,
she made me promise I'd never touch a card, never play any sort of
gambling game. I promised readily enough, and I thought nothing of her
insistence. Maman was old-fashioned in many ways--I mean the life we
lived in. Rouen was so different from this that I could understand how
many things would shock her. I never thought about it--but--it was about
six months ago--you were away for a week and I stayed with Polly Roberts
at the Fairmont. I knew of course that she played and that Aileen and a
lot of the others did, but I hadn't given the matter a thought. One heard
nothing but bridge, bridge, bridge. I was sick of the word.

"But I found they played poker. Polly and Aileen, Alice Thorndyke, Janet
Maynard, Mary Kimball, Nick Doremus, Rex and one or two other men who
could get off in the afternoons.

"I never had dreamed any one in society played for such high stakes.
Janet Maynard and Mary Kimball could afford it, but Polly and Alice and
Aileen couldn't. Still they often won--enough, anyhow, to clean up and go
on. Doremus is a wonderful player. That is how I got interested, watching
him after he had explained the game to me.