"Mademoiselle," wrote De Grieux, "an unfortunate circumstance compels me to go away at once. You have, no doubt, observed that I have purposely avoided a final explanation with you until such time as the whole position might he cleared up. The arrival of your old relation {de la vieiUe dame) and her absurd behaviour have put sin end to my doubts. The unsettled state of my own affairs forbids me to cherish further
the SAAreet hopes which I permitted myself to indulge for some time. I regret the past, but I trust that you will not detect in my behaviour anything unworthy of a gentleman and an honest man (genMhomme et hormete homme). Having lost almost all my money in loems to your stepfather, I find myself compelled to make tiie utmost use of what is left to me; I have already sent word to my friend in Petersburg to arrange at once for the sale of the estates he has mortgaged to me; knowing, however, that your frivolous stepfather has squandered your private fortune I have determined to forgive him fifty thousand francs, and I am returning him part of my claims on his property equivalent to that sum, so that you are now put in a position to regain all you have lost by demanding the property from him by legal process. I hope. Mademoiselle, that in the present position of affairs my action will be very advantageous to you. I hope, too, that by this action I am fully performing the duty of a man and a gentleman. Rest assured that your memory is imprinted upon my heart for ever."
"Well, that's all clear," I said, turning to Polina; "surely you coiJd have expected nothing else," I added, with indignation.
"I expected nothing," she answered, with apparent composure, though there was a tremor in her voice; "I had made up my mind long ago; I read his mind and knew what he was thinking. He thought that I was trying—^that I should insist ..." (She broke off without finishing her sentence, bit her lips emd was silent.) "I purposely doubled my scorn towards him," she began again. "I waited to see what was coming from him. If a telegram had come telling of the inheritance I'd have flung him the money borrowed from that idiot, my stepfather, and would have sent him about his business. He has been hateful to me for ages and ages. Oh! he was not the same man! a thousand times over, I tell you, he was different 1 but now, now . . . Oh, with what happiness I could fling that fifty thousand in his nasty face and spit and stamp ..."
"But the security, the lOU for that fifty thousand, is in the General's hands. Take it and return it to De Grieux."
"Oh, that's not the same thing, that's not the same thing ..."
"Yes, that's true, it's not the same thing. Besides, what is the General capable of now? And Granny!" I cried suddenly.
Polina looked at me, as it were absent-mindedly and impatiently. ^^
"Why Granny?" asked Polina, with vexation. "I can't go to her . . . And I don't want to ask anyone's pardon," she added irritably.
"What's to be done!" I cried, "and how, oh, how could you love De Grieux! Oh, the scoundrel, the scoundrel! If you like I will kill him in a duel 1 Where is he now?"
"He's at Frankfurt, and will be there three days."
"One word from you and I'll set off to-morrow by the first train," I said, with stupid enthusiasm.
She laughed.
"Why, he'll say, maybe: 'Give me back the fifty thousand francs first.' Besides, what should you fight him for? . . . What nonsense it is!"
"But where, where is one to get that fifty thousand francs?" I repeated, grinding my teeth as though it had been possible to pick them up from the floor. "I say—Mr. Astley," I suggested, turning to her with a strange idea dawning upon me.
Her eyes flashed.
"What, do you mean to say you yoturself want me to turn from you to that Englishman!" she said, looking in my face with a searching glance and smiling bitterly. For the first time in her life she addressed me in the second person singular.
I beUeve she was giddy with emotion at the moment, and all at once she sat down on the sofa as though she were exhausted.
It was as though I had been struck by a flash of Ughtning.. I stood up and could not believe my eyes, could not believe my ears! Why, then she loved me! She had come to me and not to Mr. Astley!
She, she, a yoimg girl, had come to my room in a hotel, so she had utterly compromised herself by her own act, and I, I was standing before her and still did not understand.
One wild idea flashed through my mind.
"Polina, give me only one hour. Stay here only one hour and . . . I'U come back. That's . . . that's essential! You shall see! Be here, be here!"
And I ran out of the room, not responding to her amazed and questioning look; she called something after me but I did not turn back.
Sometimes the wildest idea, the most apparently impossible thought, takes possession of one's mind so strongly that one accepts it at last as something substantial . . . more than that, if the idea is associated with a strong passionate desire, then sometimes one will accept it at last as something fated, inevit-
able, predestined—as something bound to be, and bound to happen. Perhaps there is something else in it, some combination of presentiments, some extraordinary efiort of will, self-poisoning by one's own fancy—or something else—I don't know what, but on that evening (which I shall never in my life forget) something marvellous happened to me. Though it is quite justified by the laws of arithmetic, nevertheless it is a marvel to me to this day. And why, why had that conviction so long before taken such firm and deep root in my mind? J had certainly thought about it—I repeat—^not as a chance among others which might or might not come to pass, but as something which was absolutely bound to happen!
It was a quarter-past ten. I went into the Casino with a confident expectation and at the same time with an excitement I had never experienced before. There were still a good many people in the gambling hall, though not half as many as in the morning.
Between ten and eleven there are still to be found in the gambling halls the genuine desperate gamblers for whom nothing exists at a spa but roulette, who have come for that alone, who scarcely notice what is going on around them and take no interest in anything during the whole season, but play from morning till night and would be ready perhaps to play all night till dawn, too, if it were possible, ^d they always disperse with annoyance when at twelve o'clock the roulette hall is closed. And when the senior croupier announces, just before midnight: "Les trois derniers ccHfps, messieurs," they are ready to stake on those last three strokes all they have in their pockets—and do, in fact, lose most at that time. I went up to the very table where Granny had sat that day. It was not crowded, and so I soon took my place at the table standing. Exactly before me was the word "Passe" scrawled on the green cloth.
"Passe" is the series of numbers from nineteen inclusive to thirty-six.
The first series of numbers from one to eighteen inclusive is called "Manque"; but what was that to me? I was not calculating, I had not even heard what had been the winning niunber last, and I did not ask about it when I began to play—as every player of any prudence would do. I pulled out all my twenty friedrichs d'or and staked them on "passe", the word which lay before me.
"Vingt deux," cried the croupier.
lOI
I had won and a^n staked all, including my winnings.
"Trente et un," cried the croupier.
I had won again. I had in all eighty friedrichs d'or. I staked the whole of that sum on the twelve middle numbers (my winnings would be three to one, but the chances were two to one against me.) The wheel rotated and stopped at twenty-four. I was passed three rolls each of fifty friedrichs d'or in paper and ten gold coins; I had now two hundred friedrichs d'or.