‘Indeed!’ remarked Sophia. ‘You look older;’ and her voice vibrated with suppressed emotion.
The ball slowed down. Again he had won on a single number to her sixteen.
At this she grew a little reckless; but do what she would, her own recklessness seemed to fade into a pallid system by his; the fire of her play dwindled like a candle in sunlight before his extraordinary hazards, and yet his hands might have been hands of ice.
Only once again before the pale face of the dawn began to peer in at the eastern window did they pause, and that when Pierre rose to walk up and down the room, for he was cramped with sitting. Then for the first and only time in her life the Princess showed herself inquisitive.
‘I should be honoured by knowing your name,’ she said.
‘With your Royal Highness’s permission I will keep it to myself till we have finished,’ he replied. ‘But I have on my side a question. Shall we, with your Royal Highness’s permission, place no limit on the stakes? These hundred napoleon stakes are getting a little tedious, are they not? We are used to them, and when one gets used to a thing it is better to change it.’
Now, most men when they have won a fortune would absolutely refuse to raise the stakes, and the Princess raised her hands in amazement. Never had her wildest imaginations pictured a gambler so magnificent as this. What a king, she thought, he would have made! He was royal—a man out of sight of the run of humanity, as kings should be. None but she could so well have appreciated his extraordinary self-control, none could have so estimated his scale.
‘My limit shall only be that of which I am possessed,’ she said. ‘I have still six thousand napoleons to lose, but I am afraid I have no more.’
The black Domino separated from his pile of winnings sixty rouleaux of a hundred napoleons.
‘The night is already gone,’ he said. ‘I will stake on red.’