After an hour or two Pierre went to get his supper, and in the momentary pause before the new croupier took his place she leaned forward across the table.
‘Let me have the honour of complimenting you on your play,’ she said to the Black Domino; ‘it is perfection, and I have seen a good deal of play.’
The man bowed.
‘Praise from the Princess Sophia is praise indeed,’ he said. ‘You see, your Royal Highness, I make it a rule never to get up a loser; that gives one a certain calmness. One only has to play long enough.’
She laughed.
‘A good rule,’ she said. ‘Your methods are the same as my own. It will come to a duel between us.’
‘That shall be as your Royal Highness pleases,’ he said.
Prince Victor was of that imbecile type of gambler which is usually known as the prudent; in other words, after having lost a specified sum, he closed his performances for the evening. This consummation he usually attained after about three hours’ hesitating and inglorious adventure; but this evening his rate of progress was somewhat more advanced, and he rose from the table shortly before midnight. On the stroke of the clock, without warning, the two battalions of storm burst overhead; a wicked flicker of lightning zigzagged across the darkness close outside the room where they were playing, and simultaneously, it seemed, a crack of thunder so appalling burst above them that even the Princess, who seldom showed emotion, half rose from her seat with a little cry of fright. Princess Aline buried her face in her hands; Pierre, who had returned from his supper, cried ‘Mon Dieu!’ in a trembling voice and crossed himself; the Black Domino alone remained perfectly unmoved.
‘Your Royal Highness should recollect,’ he said to Sophia, ‘that when one has heard the thunder it is proof-positive that one has not been struck by the lightning. I am quite sure we all heard the thunder. Personally, I am deafened; my ears sing. I see no has staked on this roll.’
Shortly after one Princess Aline got up rather hastily from the table. She said something in a loud, angry tone; but her words, luckily perhaps, were drowned by a prodigious explosion overhead. Outside the rain was falling like a shower of lead, and now and then a lightning flash crossing the black square of the windows would turn the water into a deluge of prismatic colour. Already the air was cooler, but the chariots of God still drove backwards and forwards over their very heads. As Aline left the table, the Black Domino asked for a whisky-and-soda, and Princess Sophia put on her gloves; for her hands trembled perceptibly, and her little finger made strange twitching movements. The Black Domino must already have made a fortune, and Princess Sophia thought with dismay that her Civil list would not be paid till September, and she was not very good at economizing.