“Then use his own tricks against him. Look you, my friend, the gambling instinct is the keenest in all men, for we have learned that, after all, life is a great gamble. The only thing you are sure of is that you are sure of nothing. If I took up this sport, this gambling with human lives, I would do so for the pure thrill of it. I like the plunger, the good loser always. But your Jurka type, he who plays the game doggedly, who merely wants something for nothing, you will find him a bad loser. He plays to win only; the other type of man plays for the thrill of achievement. Your anarchist, too, he takes a hand. If he loses, he will say the game is crooked, and demand a new deal. If he wins, he plays safe and stops, taking all the winnings. He is like your aristocrat, after all; he will amuse himself with solitaire forever if you give him the chance.”
Steccho rose moodily, walking up and down the floor.
“You have stolen to please the lust of empire,” Dmitri resumed, smoking leisurely. “You are like the man who is afraid to play the game, to take a chance himself, so he turns the wheel for others. If he fares well from the man who wins, he likes him; if not, then he is for the man who loses. He listens to what this man says, Let us break up this house and do away with gambling forever. We will all play safe, then, eh? But it is not possible, Ferad. All philosophy fails to reconcile human nature. We are all gamblers. The trouble is that your Jurkas give the game a bad odor, and then the losers cry out that the whole game is not worth while. We are too selfish. We forget that we all lay up riches but for the heirs of to-morrow. I would make the way easy. I would strive to clear away the barriers that all might reach the goal of opportunity. Yet I would not hobble the swift that the slow may keep pace with them. Will you sleep here to-night?” He laid his arm around the boy’s shoulders. “Do not think me unsympathetic. It is dangerous to play the game here, and the weak go under. There are some that cheat. I think Jurka is a cheat. We did not fight to make the world safe; that would be a bore. We fought to make it livable.”
“I do not care for anything but to see my mother and sister again,” said Steccho.
Dmitri’s brow cleared. “Ah, and I am forgetting all the good news for you!” he cried, seizing the letter from the mantel. “Here is word from home. We will pour more wine and plan to send you back free from the talons of the black eagle.”
Steccho’s face softened in a glow of tenderness as he caught the letter. There came the noise from without of a footfall on the steps, hesitant, doubtful. As the boy swept the jewels from the table, a tapping sounded on the outer door. Dmitri flung back the drapery before the door of his bedroom.
“There is the window,” he whispered. “Watch out before you drop from it.”
The knock came again, this time louder. He lowered the light and went to answer it.
CHAPTER XVIII
Carlota stood on the threshold. Her face was white in the semi-darkness. In the east a faint quiver of radiance showed in the sky like the reflection of moonlight on dark waters. Dmitri stared at the girl in wonderment.