nd Sonya's joint
ages. Rostov, leaning his head on both hands, sat at the table which
was scrawled over with figures, wet with spilled wine, and littered
with cards. One tormenting impression did not leave him: that those
broad-boned reddish hands with hairy wrists visible from under the shirt
sleeves, those hands which he loved and hated, held him in their power.

"Six hundred rubles, ace, a corner, a nine... winning it back's
impossible... Oh, how pleasant it was at home!... The knave, double
or quits... it can't be!... And why is he doing this to me?" Rostov
pondered. Sometimes he staked a large sum, but Dolokhov refused to
accept it and fixed the stake himself. Nicholas submitted to him, and at
one moment prayed to God as he had done on the battlefield at the bridge
over the Enns, and then guessed that the card that came first to hand
from the crumpled heap under the table would save him, now counted the
cords on his coat and took a card with that number and tried staking the
total of his losses on it, then he looked round for aid from the other
players, or peered at the now cold face of Dolokhov and tried to read
what was passing in his mind.

"He knows of course what this loss means to me. He can't want my ruin.
Wasn't he my friend? Wasn't I fond of him? But it's not his fault.
What's he to do if he has such luck?... And it's not my fault either,"
he thought to himself, "I have done nothing wrong. Have I killed anyone,
or insulted or wished harm to anyone? Why such a terrible misfortune?
And when did it begin? Such a little while ago I came to this table with
the thought of winning a hundred rubles to buy that casket for Mamma's
name day and then going home. I was so happy, so free, so lighthearted!
And I did not realize how happy I was! When did that end and when did
this new, terrible state of things begin? What marked the change? I sat
all the time in this same place at this table, chose and placed cards,
and watched those broad-boned agile hands in the same way. When did it
happen and what has happened? I am well and strong and still the same
and in the same place. No, it can't be! Surely it will all end in
nothing!"

He was flushed and bathed in perspiration, though the room was not hot.
His face was terrible and piteous to see, especially from its helpless
efforts to seem calm.

The score against him reached the fateful sum of forty-three thousand.
Rostov had just prepared a card, by bending the corner o