At last, on her homeward journey, he whispered the magic name of Monte Carlo, and her heart was aflutter in anticipation of wonderland.
She stood bewildered, lonely, and dismayed in the first row behind the chairs, fingering an empty purse.

She had been in the rooms ten minutes, and she had lost twenty louis.

Her last coup had been successful, but a bland old lady, with the white hair and waxen face of sainted motherhood, had swept up her winnings so unconcernedly that Zora's brain began to swim.
As she felt too strange and shy to expostulate she stood fingering her empty purse.
The scene was utterly different from what she had expected.

She had imagined a gay, crowded room, wild gamblers shouting in their excitement, a band playing delirious waltz music, champagne corks popping merrily, painted women laughing, jesting loudly, all kinds of revelry and devilry and Bacchic things undreamed of.

This was silly of her, no doubt, but the silliness of inexperienced young women is a matter for the pity, not the reprobation, of the judicious.