The second game showed his quality still better. Trumps were most unkindly against him, and about the middle of the game he threw them to the winds, and escaped the rubicon by a continual scorning of kings and aces.
‘I could not have got sequence, as it turned out,’ he said apologetically at the end. ‘You had already shown me three queens, and the fourth you took in two tricks later.’
‘Tell me how you knew that,’ asked Sophia.
‘It was the only card you could have had any reason for holding up,’ he said. ‘Any other card you might safely have shown me, but this you held till the end of the game.’
Princess Sophia beamed at him.
‘I will play with you till it shall be you who says you have had enough. Oh, I love the cards!’ she cried in a sort of ecstasy, gathering up her hand.
‘The sun shall first be quenched,’ said Petros.
It was the month of June, and the earliest daylight stealing into the room about four of the morning saw a quaint sight. In an armchair sat Princess Sophia’s lady-in-waiting, fast asleep with mouth wide open, and snoring stertorously, and on a divan near the window lay Prince Petros’s gentleman-in-waiting, with his face on his hand, sleeping like a tired child. The candles on the table by which the two played had already once been replenished, and as the light of morning grew clearer they were again burned to their sockets. A large silver ash-tray by the Prince’s side was heaped with a pyramid of ends of cigarettes, two empty siphons stood on the floor, and two trays with the débris of supper stood on a side-table. It had been a hot night, and the curtains were undrawn over the open windows. Every now and then a footman in scarlet livery, with eyelids, like La Giaconda’s, a little weary, looked in through the open door and stole away again. Outside, the garden was still dreaming under its blanket of dew-laden gossamer webs; a hundred feet below slept the red roofs of the town; and the birds had not yet begun to tune their voices for the day.
Just before the sun rose, Prince Petros cut to Sophia.
‘Shall I extinguish the candles?’ he asked; ‘it is already light enough to play without. How delicious the morning air is!’