" I really cannot say," was my reply.
"What? You cannot say?" he cried in great astonishment.
"No; I have never noticed whether she does so or not," I
repeated with a smile.
"Hm! Then I have an idea in my mind," he concluded. Lastly,
with a nod, he walked away with a pleased expression on his
face. The conversation had been carried on in execrable French.
IV
Today has been a day of folly, stupidity, and ineptness. The
time is now eleven o'clock in the evening, and I am sitting in
my room and thinking. It all began, this morning, with my being
forced to go and play roulette for Polina Alexandrovna. When she
handed me over her store of six hundred gulden I exacted two
conditions --namely, that I should not go halves with her in her
winnings, if any (that is to say, I should not take anything for
myself), and that she should explain to me, that same evening,
why it was so necessary for her to win, and how much was the sum
which she needed. For, I could not suppose that she was doing all
this merely for the sake of money. Yet clearly she did need some
money, and that as soon as possible, and for a special purpose.
Well, she promised to explain matters, and I departed. There was
a tremendous crowd in the gaming-rooms. What an arrogant, greedy
crowd it was! I pressed forward towards the middle of the room
until I had secured a seat at a croupier's elbow. Then I began
to play in timid fashion, venturing only twenty or thirty gulden
at a time. Meanwhile, I observed and took notes. It seemed to me
that calculation was superfluous, and by no means possessed of
the importance which certain other players attached to it, even
though they sat with ruled papers in their hands, whereon they
set down the coups, calculated the chances, reckoned, staked,
and--lost exactly as we more simple mortals did who played
without any reckoning at all.
However, I deduced from the scene one conclusion which seemed to me
reliable --namely, that in the flow of fortuitous chances there is,
if not a system, at all events a sort of order. This, of course,
is a very strange thing. For instance, after a dozen middle figures
there would always occur a dozen or so outer ones. Suppose the ball
stopped twice at a dozen outer figures; it would then pass to a dozen of
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