The new coherence in society began to manifest itself in one important way: public gambling declined. In the "old days" it was said that everybody but clergymen frequented the big gambling halls. They were a sort of club. But now the most influential citizens began to stay away. Probably they gambled as much as ever, but they took such pleasures in private. Two or three only of the larger places remained in business. Save for them, open gambling was confined to the low dives near the water front. There was no definite movement against the practice. It merely fell off gradually.
During these busy years the Sherwoods had quite methodically continued to lead their customary lives. He read his morning paper on the veranda of the Bella Union, talked his leisurely politics, drove his horses, and in the evening attended to his business. She drove abroad, received her men friends, gave them impartial advice and help in their difficulties, dressed well, and carried on a life of many small activities. The Sherwoods were always an attractive looking and imposing couple, whenever they appeared. About three or four times a year they drove into the residential part of town and made a half-dozen formal calls--on the Keiths among others. Probably their lives were more nearly ordered on a routine than those of any other people in the new city.
One afternoon Sherwood came in at the usual hour, deposited his high hat carefully on the table, flicked the dust off his boots, and remarked casually:
"Patsy, I've sold the business."
Mrs. Sherwood was pinning on her hat. She stopped short, her hand halfway to her head, as though turned to marble. After a moment she asked in a quick, stifled voice:
"What do you mean?"
"Well," replied Sherwood, continuing methodically to readjust his dress, "I've been thinking for some time that times were changing. The gambling business is losing tone. I don't see the same class of people I used to see. Public sentiment--of the very best people, I mean--is drifting away from it. In the future, in my judgment, it's not going to pay as it ought. I've been thinking these things for some time. So when a bona fide purchaser came along----"
But he got no further. With a smothered cry she let her arms drop. Her customary poise had vanished. She flung herself on him, laughing, crying, gasping.
"Why, Patsy! Patsy!" he cried, patting her small, sleek head as it pressed against his shoulder. "What is it, dearie? Tell me? What's wrong?"
He was vastly perturbed and anxious, for she was not at all the type that loses control readily.
"Nothing! nothing!" she gasped. "I'll be all right in a minute. Don't mind me. Just let me alone. Only you told me so suddenly----"
"Don't you want me to sell?" he asked, utterly bewildered.
Gradually he gathered from her disjointed exclamations that this was just the one thing she had wanted, secretly, for years; the thing she had schooled herself not to hope for; the last thing in the world she had expected. And to his astonishment he gathered further that now she was free she could take her place with the other women----
"But I hadn't the slightest idea you wanted to!" he interrupted at this point. "You've never showed any signs of paying the slightest attention to them before!"
She was drying her eyes, and looking a little happily foolish.
"I knew better than to give them a chance to snub me," she told him. "Now I'm respectable."
But at this Sherwood reared his crest.
"Respectable!" he snorted, "What do you mean? Haven't you always been respectable? I'd like to see anybody who would hint--"
"You're a dear, but you're a man," she broke in more calmly. "Don't you know that a gambler's wife isn't respectable--in their sense of the word?"
"But every mother's son of them gambles!" cried Sherwood. "It's a perfectly legal and legitimate occupation!"
"The men do; we'd always get along if it was only a question of the men. But the women make distinctions--"
"Look here!" he broke out wrathfully. "There's Dick Blatchford mixed up in dirty work for dirty money I wouldn't lay my fin............