I really wanted to lose. I allowed him forty points in advance. He stood fifty-two to my thirty-six. He began to cut the yellow one, and missed eighteen points; and I was standing just at the turning-point. I made a stroke so as to knock the ball off of the billiard-table. No⁠—so luck would have it. Do what I might, he even missed the doublet. I had won again.

“Listen,” says he. “Peter,”⁠—he did not call me Petrushka then⁠—“I can’t pay you the whole right away. In a couple of months I could pay three thousand even, if it were necessary.”

And there he stood just as red, and his voice kind of trembled.

“Very good, sir,” says I.

With this he laid down the cue. Then he began to walk up and down, up and down, the perspiration running down his face.

“Peter,” says he, “let’s try it again, double or quit.”