I put to myself the
question: "Do I, or do I not love her?" and again I could return myself
no answer or, rather, for the hundredth time I told myself that I
detested her. Yes, I detested her; there were moments (more especially
at the close of our talks together) when I would gladly have given half
my life to have strangled her! I swear that, had there, at such
moments, been a sharp knife ready to my hand, I would have seized that
knife with pleasure, and plunged it into her breast. Yet I also swear
that if, on the Shlangenberg, she had REALLY said to me, "Leap into
that abyss," I should have leapt into it, and with equal pleasure. Yes,
this I knew well. One way or the other, the thing must soon be ended.
She, too, knew it in some curious way; the thought that I was fully
conscious of her inaccessibility, and of the impossibility of my ever
realising my dreams, afforded her, I am certain, the keenest possible
pleasure. Otherwise, is it likely that she, the cautious and clever
woman that she was, would have indulged in this familiarity and
openness with me? Hitherto (I concluded) she had looked upon me in the
same light that the old Empress did upon her servant--the Empress who
hesitated not to unrobe herself before her slave, since she did not
account a slave a man. Yes, often Polina must have taken me for
something less than a man!"

Still, she had charged me with a commission--to win what I could at
roulette. Yet all the time I could not help wondering WHY it was so
necessary for her to win something, and what new schemes could have
sprung to birth in her ever-fertile brain. A host of new and unknown
factors seemed to have arisen during the last two weeks. Well, it
behoved me to divine them, and to probe them, and that as soon as
possible. Yet not now: at the present moment I must repair to the
roulette-table.

II

I confess I did not like it. Although I had made up my mind to play, I
felt averse to doing so on behalf of some one else. In fact, it almost
upset my balance, and I entered the gaming rooms with an angry feeling
at my heart. At first glance the scene irritated me. Never at any time
have I been able to bear the flunkeyishness which one meets in the
Press of the world at large, but more especially in that of Russia,
where, almost every evening, journalists write on two subjects in
particular namely, on the splendour and luxury of the casinos to be
found in the Rhenish towns, and on the heaps of gol