At the end of twenty minutes Condy was
playing, having borrowed enough money of Sargeant to start him in
the game.
Unusually talkative and restless, he had suddenly hardened and
stiffened to a repressed, tense calm; speechless, almost rigid in
his chair. Excitable under even ordinary circumstances, his every
faculty was now keyed to its highest pitch. The nervous strain
upon him was like the stretching and tightening of harp-strings,
too taut to quiver. The color left his face, and the moisture
fled his lips. His projected article, his promise to Blix, all
the jollity of the afternoon, all thought of time or place, faded
away as the one indomitable, evil passion of the man leaped into
life within him, and lashed and roweled him with excitement. His
world resolved itself to a round green table, columns of tri-
colored chips, and five ever-changing cards that came and went and
came again before his tired eyes like the changing, weaving colors
of the kaleidoscope. Midnight struck, then one o'clock, then two,
three, and four. Still his passion rode him like a hag, spurring
the jaded body, rousing up the wearied brain.
Finally, at half-past four, at a time when Condy was precisely
where he had started, neither winner nor loser by so much as a
dime, a round of Jack-pots was declared, and the game broke up.
Condy walked home to the uptown hotel where he lived with his
mother, and went to bed as the first milk-wagons began to make
their appearance and the newsboys to cry the morning papers.
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