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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
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