you are NOT cast down. Tell me, are you never going to give
up gambling?"

"Damn the gambling! Yes, I should certainly have given it up, were it
not that--"

"That you are losing? I thought so. You need not tell me any more. I
know how things stand, for you have said that last in despair, and
therefore, truthfully. Have you no other employment than gambling?"

"No; none whatever."

Astley gave me a searching glance. At that time it was ages since I had
last looked at a paper or turned the pages of a book.

"You are growing blase," he said. "You have not only renounced life,
with its interests and social ties, but the duties of a citizen and a
man; you have not only renounced the friends whom I know you to have
had, and every aim in life but that of winning money; but you have also
renounced your memory. Though I can remember you in the strong, ardent
period of your life, I feel persuaded that you have now forgotten every
better feeling of that period--that your present dreams and aspirations
of subsistence do not rise above pair, impair rouge, noir, the twelve
middle numbers, and so forth."

"Enough, Mr. Astley!" I cried with some irritation--almost in anger.
"Kindly do not recall to me any more recollections, for I can remember
things for myself. Only for a time have I put them out of my head. Only
until I shall have rehabilitated myself, am I keeping my memory dulled.
When that hour shall come, you will see me arise from the dead."

"Then you will have to be here another ten years," he replied. "Should
I then be alive, I will remind you--here, on this very bench--of what I
have just said. In fact, I will bet you a wager that I shall do so."

"Say no more," I interrupted impatiently. "And to show you that I have
not wholly forgotten the past, may I enquire where Mlle. Polina is? If
it was not you who bailed me out of prison, it must have been she. Yet
never have I heard a word concerning her."

"No, I do not think it was she. At the present moment she is in
Switzerland, and you will do me a favour by ceasing to ask me these
questions about her." Astley said this with a firm, and even an angry,
air.

"Which means that she has dealt you a serious wound?" I burst out with
an involuntary sneer.

"Mlle. Polina," he continued, "Is the best of all possible living
beings; but, I repeat, that I shall thank you to cease questioning me
about her. You never really knew her, and her name on your lips is an
offence to