“Oh! so you say!” replied Malinowsky, rudely. “Damnation, take it! when I win, then you tell me you’ve staked on the side, and when I lose …”
“I beg your pardon,” said Von Deitz, dropping his Russian accent, as he was wont to do when angry.
“Pardon be hanged! Take back your stake! No! No! Take it back, I say!”
“But let me tell you, sir, that …”
“Good God, gentlemen! what the devil does all this mean?” shouted Sarudine, as he flung down his cards.
At this juncture a new comer appeared in the doorway, Sarudine was ashamed of his own vulgar outburst, and of his noisy, drunken guests, with their cards and bottles, for the whole scene suggested a low tavern.
The visitor was tall and thin, and wore a loosely-fitting white suit, and an extremely high collar. He stood on the threshold amazed, endeavouring to recognize Sarudine.
“Hallo! Pavel Lvovitsch! What brings you here?” cried Sarudine, as, crimson with annoyance, he advanced to greet him.
The newcomer entered in hesitating fashion, and the eyes of all were fixed on his dazzlingly white shoes picking their way through the beer- bottles, corks and cigarette-ends. So white and neat and scented was he, that, in all these clouds of smoke, and amid all these flushed, drunken fellows, he might have been likened to a lily in the marsh, had he not looked so frail and worn-out, and if his features had not been so puny, nor his teeth so decayed under his scanty, red moustache.
“Where have you come from? Have you been away a long while from Pitjer?”[[1]] said Sarudine, somewhat flurried, as he feared that “Pitjer” was not exactly the word which he ought to have used.