Her friend touched her elbow and proposed that they should quit the table.

For reply Gwendolen put ten louis on the same spot: she was in that mood of defiance in which the mind loses sight of any end beyond the satisfaction of enraged resistance; and with the puerile stupidity of a dominant impulse includes luck among its objects of defiance.

Since she was not winning strikingly, the next best thing was to lose strikingly.

She controlled her muscles, and showed no tremor of mouth or hands.

Each time her stake was swept off she doubled it.