“No,” says he, “I won’t come, I tell you. For you it’s all one whether I go or not, yet for me it’s no good to come here.”

And so he did not come for ten days more. And then, it being the holidays, he came dressed up in a dress suit: he’d evidently been into company. And he was here all day long; he kept playing, and he came the next day, and the third.⁠ ⁠…

And it began to go in the old style, and I thought it would be fine to have another trial with him.

“No,” says he, “I’m not going to play with you; and as to the one hundred and eighty rubles that I owe you, if you’ll come at the end of a month, you shall have it.”

Very good. So I went to him at the end of a month.

“By God,” says he, “I can’t give it to you; but come back on Thursday.”

Well, I went on Thursday. I found that he had a splendid suite of apartments.