tions of faro to the seductions of flirting.
Naroumoff conducted Hermann to Chekalinsky's residence.

They passed through a suite of rooms, filled with attentive domestics.
The place was crowded. Generals and Privy Counsellors were playing at
whist, young men were lolling carelessly upon the velvet-covered
sofas, eating ices and smoking pipes. In the drawing-room, at the head
of a long table, around which were assembled about a score of players,
sat the master of the house keeping the bank. He was a man of about
sixty years of age, of a very dignified appearance; his head was
covered with silvery white hair; his full, florid countenance
expressed good-nature, and his eyes twinkled with a perpetual smile.
Naroumoff introduced Hermann to him. Chekalinsky shook him by the hand
in a friendly manner, requested him not to stand on ceremony, and then
went on dealing.

The game occupied some time. On the table lay more than thirty cards.
Chekalinsky paused after each throw, in order to give the players time
to arrange their cards and note down their losses, listened politely
to their requests, and more politely still, straightened the corners
of cards that some player's hand had chanced to bend. At last the game
was finished. Chekalinsky shuffled the cards, and prepared to deal
again.

"Will you allow me to take a card?" said Hermann, stretching out his
hand from behind a stout gentleman who was punting.

Chekalinsky smiled and bowed silently, as a sign of acquiescence.
Naroumoff laughingly congratulated Hermann on his abjuration of that
abstention from cards which he had practised for so long a period, and
wished him a lucky beginning.

"Stake!" said Hermann, writing some figures with chalk on the back of
his card.

"How much?" asked the banker, contracting the muscles of his eyes,
"excuse me, I cannot see quite clearly."

"Forty-seven thousand roubles," replied Hermann. At these words every
head in the room turned suddenly round, and all eyes were fixed upon
Hermann.

"He has taken leave of his senses!" thought Naroumoff.

"Allow me to inform you," said Chekalinsky, with his eternal smile,
"that you are playing very high; nobody here has ever staked more than
two hundred and seventy-five roubles at once."

"Very well," replied Hermann, "but do you accept my card or not?"

Chekalinsky bowed in token of consent.

"I only wish to observe," said he, "that although I have the greatest
confidence in my friends, I ca