‘Oh, hear me out,’ she replied. ‘It is the excitement I love it for. I do not think of Monte Carlo as a sort of Stock Exchange, where the acute make money and the stupid lose it. A system reduces it to just that—a sort of Stock Exchange without any bulls and bears, whatever they are.’
‘I prefer to win,’ said Petros.
‘Yes; so do I, but I would not promise never to go to the tables if the croupier gave me an annuity to keep away.’
‘It depends on the size of the annuity.’
‘Ah, then, that is exactly where we differ,’ said she, rising. ‘I should be no happier for an annuity, nor, indeed, would you, but I am a great deal happier for a little excitement. It is a lovely afternoon. What a wonderful colour the sea is! Let us go to the tables.’
Petros won largely that afternoon, and the system justified itself as far as it is possible for a system to be justified. But the charm of him considered merely as a gambler, as a man who had made a fortune at Homburg, had terribly faded in Sophia’s eyes; indeed, to win money at the tables on a system seemed to her slightly sordid, a kind of trade, and the money thus won, she imagined, would have a kind of stuffy smell about it. The feeling she knew was unreasonable, and she did not defend it; but she never fell into the error of reasoning about a conviction, and concluding that she was made so and her husband otherwise, she dismissed the matter as far as possible from her mind.
She herself on the last day that they were there had one of those runs of luck which occur once in a lifetime. Four times she staked a hundred napoleons on one number, and twice out of the four times, incredible to state, won. Then she played on the colour for half an hour, and lost scarcely once out of ten times, and, to crown all, backed the bank for the last hour and cleared as much again. Petros was aghast; he himself would never have backed one number, and to do so four times seemed to him either imbecile or criminal, and he could not say to himself that Sophia was imbecile. It materially added to his annoyance to see her win twice, while the sordid and infallible system was losing on an average fifty francs an hour—a monotonous and inglorious form of adventure. He felt warmly on the subject, and as they were rowed across to the yacht that night addressed a remark to Sophia which keenly resented.
‘I would as soon think of backing one number,’ he said, ‘as of robbing my father.’
‘And I would as soon think of playing on a system’ returned Sophia, with spirit, ‘as of sea-sick.’