Through them he shouldered, thrilled as
he advanced deeper into the throng, fired with the contact of the crush
around him.
Already the familiarity of his appearance and his name seemed to
sanction his presence; two minor clubs, but good ones--in need of
dues--had strained at this social camel and swallowed him. Card-rooms
welcomed him--not the rooms once flung open contemptuously for his
plucking--but rooms where play was fiercer, and where those who faced
him expected battle to the limit.
And they got it, for he no longer felt obliged to lose. And that again
was a mistake: he could not yet afford to win.
Thick in the chance and circumstance of the outer camp, heavily involved
financially and already a crushing financial force, meshed in, or
spinning in his turn the strands and counter-strands of intrigue, with a
dozen men already mortally offended and a woman or two alarmed or
half-contemptuously on guard, flattered, covetous, or afraid, the limit
of Neergard's intelligence was reached; his present horizon ended the
world for him because he could not imagine anything beyond it; and that
smirking vanity which had 'squired him so far, hat in hand, now plucked
off its mask and leered boldly about in the wake of its close-eyed
master.
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