terms, since nohow can my life be valued so
highly as yours. If I run you through, I destroy a whole world of the
finest hopes; and if I fall, then you have put an end to a miserable
existence, that is harrowed by the bitterest and most agonising
memories. But after all--and this is of course the main thing--I don't
conceive myself to have been in the remotest degree insulted. You bade
me go, and I went."

These last words the stranger spoke in a tone which nevertheless
betrayed the sting in his heart. This was enough for the Baron to again
apologise, which he did by especially dwelling upon the fact that the
stranger's glance had, he did not know why, gone straight to his heart,
till at last he could endure it no longer.

"I hope then," said the stranger, "that if my glance did really
penetrate to your heart, it aroused you to a sense of the threatening
danger on the brink of which you are hovering. With a light glad heart
and youthful ingenuousness you are standing on the edge of the abyss of
ruin; one single push and you will plunge headlong down without a hope
of rescue. In a single word, you are on the point of becoming a
confirmed and passionate gambler and ruining yourself."

The Baron assured him that he was completely mistaken. He related the
circumstances under which he had first gone to the faro-table, and
assured him that he entirely lacked the gambler's characteristic
disposition; all he wished was to lose two hundred _Louis d'or_ or so,
and when he had succeeded in this he intended to cease punting. Up to
that time, however, he had had the most conspicuous run of good-luck.

"Oh! but," cried the stranger, "oh! but it is exactly this run of
good-luck wherein lies the subtlest and most formidable temptation
of the malignant enemy. It is this run of good-luck which attends
your play, Baron,--the circumstances under which you have begun to
play,--nay, your entire behaviour whilst actually engaged in play,
which only too plainly betray how your interest in it deepens and
increases on each occasion; all--all this reminds me only too forcibly
of the awful fate of a certain unhappy man, who, in many respects like
you, began to play under circumstances similar to those which you have
described in your own case. And therefore it was that I could not
keep my eyes off you, and that I was hardly able to restrain myself
from saying in words what my glances were meant to tell you. 'Oh!
see--see--see the demons stretc