‘It’s a long while since we’ve met,’ said he; ‘thanks for coming. I’ll just finish dealing here, and Ilyushka will make his appearance with his chorus.’
‘I did go to see you,’ said Rostov, flushing.
Dolohov made him no reply.
‘You might put down a stake,’ he said.
Rostov recalled at that instant a strange conversation he once had with Dolohov. ‘None but fools trust to luck in play,’ Dolohov had said
then. ‘Or are you afraid to play with me?’ Dolohov said now, as though divining Rostov’s thought; and he smiled. Behind his smile Rostov saw in him that mood which he had seen in him at the club dinner and at other times, when Dolohov seemed, as it were, weary of the monotony of daily life, and felt a craving to escape from it by some strange, for the most part cruel, act.
Rostov felt ill at ease; he racked his brain and could not find in it a joke in which to reply to Dolohov’s words. But before h? had time to do so, Dolohov, looking straight into Rostov’s face, said to him slowly and deliberately so that all could hear: ‘Do you remember, I was talking to you about play . . . he’s a fool who trusts to luck in play; one must play a sure game, and I want to try.’
‘Try his luck; or try to play a sure game?’ wondered Rostov.
‘Indeed, and you’d better not play,’ he added; and throwing down a pack he had just torn open, he said, ‘Bank, gentlemen!’
Moving the money forward, Dolohov began dealing.
Rostov sat near him, and at first he did not play. Dolohov glanced at him.
‘Why don’t you play?’ said Dolohov. And strange to say, Nikolay felt that he could not help taking up a card, staking a trifling sum on it, and beginning to play.
‘I have no money with me,’ said Rostov.
‘I’ll trust you!’
Rostov staked five roubles on a card and lost it, staked again and again lost. Dolohov ‘killed,’ that is, beat ten cards in succession from Rostov.
‘Gentlemen,’ he said, after dealing again for a little while, ‘I beg you to put the money on the cards or else I shall get muddled over the reckoning.’
One of the players said that he hoped he could trust him.
‘I can trust you, but I’m afraid of making mistakes; I beg you to lay the money on the cards,’ answered Dolohov. ‘You needn’t worry, we’ll settle our accounts,’ he added to Rostov.
The play went on; a footman never ceased carrying round champagne.
All Rostov’s cards were beaten, and the sum of eight hundred roubles was scored against him. He wrote on a card eight hundred roubles, but while champagne was being poured out for him, he changed his mind and again wrote down the usual stake, twenty roubles.
‘Leave it,’ said Dolohov, though he did not seem to be looking at Rostov; ‘you’ll win it back all the sooner. I lose to the rest, while I win from you. Or perhaps you are afraid of me,’ he repeated.
Rostov excused himself, left the stake of eight hundred and laid down the seven of hearts, a card with a corner torn, which he had picked up from the ground. Well he remembered that card afterwards. He laid down the seven of hearts, wrote on it with a broken piece of chalk 800 in bold round figures; he drank the glass of warmed champagne that had been given him, smiled at Dolohov’s words, and with a sinking at his heart, waiting for the seven of hearts, he watched Dolohov’s hands that
