Among the gamblers the Casino was known as the "factory," and they really meant it, when they referred to their worry and scheming around the tables as their "work."
Doubtless she had spent a large part of the night figuring, in order to be on hand at the Casino, at the opening hour, her eyes still heavy with sleep, and without paying any attention to her personal adornment, as though there were all too little time for carrying out some wonderful combination she had just discovered.
Whenever he met her, the Prince, with a childish rather ill-concealed motive, alluded to her son's fate. It was only thus that he could rouse her from her preoccupations with gambling, which kept her constantly distracted, talking and smiling automatically, like a person walking in her sleep.
One day, Lubimoff showed her various telegrams and letters from Madrid, Paris, and Berne. Kings and Ministers had taken up the task of finding out the fate of the aviator who had disappeared. A promise came over from Berlin, through the medium of a neutral nation, to look for the young man in every prison cantonment. They suspected that he might be confined in Poland, in a punishment camp.
Alicia began at once ardently to measure time, as though the longed-for notice might arrive at any moment.
"In Heaven's name, please, Michael! Write, telegraph this very day. Tell the gentlemen who have been so kind to send their answer directly to me. The telegram or letter might come to your Villa while you are away, and I would be hours and hours without knowing anything about it! No, have them write to me. Every day, when I go out, I tell my gardener that if there is a telegram he should bring it to me at the Casino. Imagine my impatience! Tell me you'll do this. Promise me you won't forget!"
The one thing that the Prince was at all able to forget, while he was by Alicia's side, was his own personal business. His mind was entirely taken up with discovering the forgotten captive, on whom his happiness depended.
"The day I learn for certain that he is alive!... you will see then how different I am. I shan't bore you with my troubles: you will find a different woman."
And as a matter of fact, her smile and her glances, full of promises, caused him to see in her once more the Alicia who had walked beside him on the path along the seashore, with her lips pressed closely to his in an endless kiss.
When he found himself alone, he was assailed by his own troubles and worries. He had received news from Russia through various fugitives who had just been freed from the persecution of the Revolution. The men who formerly administered his estate there had been murdered. The Lubimoff palace was being used as the headquarters of a Bolshevist Committee. His mines were national property, although no one was working them; his land had been divided; various persons of obscure origin, former old clothes dealers and liquor merchants, had become the owners of his houses, no one knew how. And at the same time that he received this news, which made his future so uncertain, he learned other details which embittered his pleasantest memories. A great lady of the Court, with whom he had had a love affair, the memory of which he cherished, was now selling newspapers on the sidewalks; another very elegant lady, who had set all the fashions in Saint Petersburg, was sweeping snow on the streets of Petrograd, and had lost several fingers by freezing. He could count by the dozen friends of his who had been killed; some of them shot with revolvers like rats, in the depths of some dungeon, others executed by firing squads. Several had perished of hunger, just as years before those of the lower classes, who now were taking revenge, had died.