“Well, but why do you neglect those ... chances?”
“Ugh, it goes against the grain to do what everybody expects me to do. I think it is ridiculous.”
Laura did not answer. She resumed her task at the mirror. There is all the same something artificial in Stellan’s recklessness tonight, she thought, not without anxiety. Because she also had lent him money. Not much, certainly, but more than she would like to lose.
Stellan sat silent a moment staring at the absurdly small lady’s watch, which seemed to have absolutely nothing to do with anything so serious as time. Then he rose as if he had suddenly noticed what time it was:
“I suppose Manne is coming tonight?” he said.
“Good ... Laura, you must see that one of your financial friends backs his new bills. Manne must have money.”
“Yes, because if he has any money, you will get some too. Isn’t that so?”
“Well, Manne still has delightfully bad luck at cards.”
Laura’s home was a meeting place for some younger financiers and a certain set of officers introduced by Stellan. Great interest was shown at Laura’s in aristocrats in financial difficulty. And sometimes the play was high.
Laura was a charming hostess at these highly original men’s parties. She enjoyed queening it over these men with a future or a past. She flirted gaily and without sentimentality with both Mars and Mercury, with a secret leaning towards Mercury. Yes, in the company of these moneyed men Laura was perfectly at home. She enjoyed the cool rapid talk of investments and bargains in shares. Their lightning estimates and calculations gently stimulated her. She was buoyed up and sustained by these speculative chances. She constantly swayed between pleasant irresponsibility and instructive calculations. Her cool and sparkling head exercised, in the last resort, a natural and easy domination over her senses. She played with bold assurance, with her womanliness as the stake.
Yes, Laura liked gambling, but she liked winners still better, winners who understood how delicately to share their gains. Since she had observed that her fair type made a special impression on Jews she had deliberately begun to cultivate “the little black boys” as she called them. This was the period of the first national industrial boom and “the little black boys” were making larger fortunes than ever. Because whatever happens in the world it is sure to make the Jews wealthier. And Laura kept to the fore and was given many a helping hand and many a hint which she did not neglect to use to her advantage. People thought that she liked to risk small sums for the fun of the thing, but secretly she carried an a systematic and extensive business by which she had collected a not insignificant fortune.