All around its edge went a row
of little pockets, each coloured alternately red and black. The expanse
of green baize was marked off with yellow lines into squares, numbered
with yellow figures. The two lengths of yellow patterns going outward
from the wheel were facsimiles of each other, and only sixteen players
could sit round the table, but eight or ten times that number crowded in
double or treble ranks behind the seated ones. The high chairs of the
two inspectors who sat opposite one another were usurped by tired women
who leaned against them, or tried to perch on the edges; and as the
croupier leaned forward to turn the wheel, arms were stretched out
everywhere, scrabbling like spiders' legs, staking money selected from
piles of notes or gold and silver.
The statuelike woman in black dashed on twenty or thirty louis, some on
numbers, some on a red lozenge, some on the words _Pair_ and _Manque_.
"She cannot possibly win," mumbled Madame d'Ambre. "She has lost her
head and staked on so many chances that if one wins she must lose much
more on the others. It is absurd. Watch her this time, and next spin I
will tell you what to do for yourself."
The croupier had picked a little ivory ball out of one of the pockets
before setting the wheel in motion. Then, as it began to revolve, with a
deft turn of the wrist he launched the ball in a whizzing rush along a
narrow shelf inside the rosewood rim, and in a direction contrary to the
whirl of the disc.
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