Astley asks whether Polina likes flowers, and Alexei cannot say. He has never noticed. The Englishman, who would rather lift his hat and pass than sit with them, nods as if an idea has pleased him, and walks off. Alexei, who cannot leave her, has been watching everyone else.
She has avoided him for two days, and the coolness is the old one, with the contempt left visible. She does not hide that he is necessary, or that she is keeping him for an end. She lets him speak of his love. The permission is the insult, because it shows how little she regards what he feels. When a risky errand needs doing she tells him only what a temporary tool would have to know. He may ask. She does not answer, and sometimes she does not notice him. He has known for three weeks that she means to play roulette through his hands, and that money is not the whole of the end. Meanwhile a telegram about the General's mother has sat unanswered for four days. The Frenchman, who last year found thirty thousand roubles for the General's Treasury dues, now talks like a guest who has put his feet on the table, and he is short even with Polina. Blanche is called rich, and a cousin, and she has a face Alexei is afraid of. If the news comes that the grandmother is not dead, he expects Blanche to vanish. He watches her anyway, loathes the watching, and stays, because leaving would mean leaving Polina.
The wire from Petersburg is still unanswered. Astley is somewhere on the next path, pleased about flowers. Blanche's stay depends on a death that has not been confirmed.
Coming Up in Chapter 4
The tension around the General's mother reaches a breaking point, while the narrator's observations of the power dynamics begin to reveal dangerous undercurrents that could destroy them all Playing again for Polina with six hundred gülden, the narrator wins, then loses everything in two reckless max bets after taunting Fate. He walks the park in a daze before confessing to Polina, who lets him.
