So!" They found a fourth without difficulty and took possession of a table at the far end of the room.

Selingman, with a huge cigar in his mouth, played well and had every appearance of thoroughly enjoying the game.
Towards the end of their third rubber, Mrs.Benedek, who was dummy, leaned across towards Norgate.
"After all, perhaps you are better off here," she murmured in German.
"There is nothing like this in Berlin." "One is at least nearer the things one cherishes," Norgate quoted in the same language.
Selingman was playing the hand and held between his fingers a card already drawn to play.

For a moment, it was suspended in the air.

He looked towards Norgate, and there was a new quality in his piercing gaze, an instant return in his expression of the shadow which had swept the broad good-humour from his face on his first appearance.

The change came and went like a flash.