Adelaide Liss. Lady Julia Waveney--'
He dropped the paper and hobbled on to his hotel. His boots had begun
to hurt him again, for he no longer walked on air.
* * * * *
At Roville there are several institutions provided by the municipality
for the purpose of enabling visitors temporarily to kill thought. Chief
among these is the Casino Municipale, where, for a price, the sorrowful
may obtain oblivion by means of the ingenious game of _boule_.
Disappointed lovers at Roville take to _boule_ as in other places
they might take to drink. It is a fascinating game. A wooden-faced high
priest flicks a red india-rubber ball into a polished oaken bowl, at
the bottom of which are holes, each bearing a number up to nine. The
ball swings round and round like a planet, slows down, stumbles among
the holes, rests for a moment in the one which you have backed, then
hops into the next one, and you lose. If ever there was a pastime
calculated to place young Adam Cupid in the background, this is it.
To the _boule_ tables that night fled George with his hopeless
passion. From the instant when he read the fatal words in the paper he
had recognized its hopelessness. All other obstacles he had been
prepared to overcome, but a title--no. He had no illusions as to his
place in the social scale.
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