The chair is wheeled toward the doors, and the party crowds in to congratulate her. The General, who had feared to be seen with her, smiles as though he were soothing a child. Quelle victoire, says De Griers. It was du feu, says Blanche. Twelve thousand florins, the grandmother answers, and with the gold it should come near thirteen thousand. She thinks six thousand roubles. Alexei reckons eight. Eight thousand roubles, she cries, and tells Potapitch and Martha to look. She gives them fifty gulden apiece, ten to the bearers, and twenty to a shabby man who calls her princesse and praises the generosity of Russian princes. A gulden goes to a man who smells of liquor, and another to an old soldier with a wooden leg, who falls back and swears. She will buy Polina a dress tomorrow, and Blanche too. Blanche's thank-you is the mocking smile she usually keeps for De Griers. Have you tried your luck? No. Yet she saw that he was burning to. He has two hundred gulden, and he means to try. Stake everything upon zero, she says, and she will lend him five hundred. Take this purse. Then, to the General: But you need not expect to receive any. De Griers scowls. C'est une terrible vieille. She is famished. When they have lunched they will go back. You are going to play again? What else do you suppose? The chances can turn, De Griers says, and Blanche says she will lose it all. What has that got to do with you? It is not your money.
At the hotel she boasts to the landlord, and gives Theodosia thirty gulden. Martha says she prayed and trembled the whole time. Be ready at four, the grandmother tells Alexei, and call a doctor, for she must take the waters. He leaves bewildered. The telegram of her death has been replaced by a living player, and still De Griers and Blanche have not given up. Every ten-gulden piece, he thinks, raised a blister on the General's heart. On the third storey, twenty paces off, Polina comes out of a door and beckons. Hush. Take this letter, and hand it personally to Mr. Astley. No answer will be required. She vanishes before the sentence is finished. He finds Astley among English riders. They barely have time to look at one another. Astley starts his horse again at once. The letter stays sealed.
Three messages have been searching for Alexei. The study door is open, which has never happened. De Griers, Blanche, and the General are shouting, and they stop when he enters, and put on better faces. De Griers is the one who speaks. Do not ruin the General. She will stake her all like thistledown, and never leave the table. We are her heirs. His affairs are in great disorder. Refuse to take her about. She would only find someone else, Alexei says. Then do not leave her, De Griers answers. Advise her. Draw her away. Blanche seizes his hands. Her face is as gentle as a roguish infant's. The General says he kisses the hem of Alexei's garment, and looks at Blanche. Three knocks. Potapitch has come from her. She could not sleep. She is on the verandah, in a bad humour. The time is half-past three. She had said four. Lift me up, she cries. Once more they set out for the roulette-salons.
