Money Can't Buy Love — The Gambler

The narrator returns to Polina drunk on his roulette win, spreading banknotes across the table while she watches with hatred he cannot read. He offers fifty thousand francs to throw in De Griers' face; Polina refuses, then breaks into hysteria, accusing him of trying to buy her as De Griers did. Their night swings between embraces and revulsion until morning, when she demands the money, takes the packet, and hurls it in his face before fleeing. Astley has taken the ill Polina to his rooms, coldly telling the narrator she is sick and predicting he will waste his fortune in Paris. Mlle. Blanche intercepts him, flirts through her dressing routine, and within the hour he boards a train with her and the Widow de Cominges, shouting that every man of birth must see Paris. He admits his love for Polina has shifted since the gaming table: money now competes with her in his heart. The chapter shows how sudden wealth amplifies relationship wounds instead of healing them, and how gambling fever can make a man abandon the person he claims to love.