The world seemed to have stopped at home that night, and in the large room—a thing Sophia had never known before—there was no one playing. The croupiers were all at their posts, some of them idly spinning the wheels, or dealing right and left for imaginary trente et quarante; but the visitors, perhaps only twenty in all, were lounging by the open windows, silently watching the gathering of the storm. Due south, and far over the sea, a terrific thunderstorm was going on; to the west, a separate and distinct display winked and grumbled. Both storms were certainly moving nearer; it was as if the elements were banded together for the destruction of Monte Carlo, and the whole world seemed to be waiting, finger on lip, for an imminent judgment. The air was windless, but every few minutes a sudden gust swept rattling and hissing across the garden, some outlying feeler, cast down like a grappling-iron from a balloon, of the fearful tumult that was raging fathoms overhead. In such a way seaweed and ooze feel the suck of a swell above, stir and wave madly through the translucent water, and are still again.

Close to the window near where they entered the large room a very tall figure of a man lounged against the wall, his face averted. Over it—no uncommon sight—was tied a black domino, for the more finished gamblers of that day—gamblers, that is, of the first water, who cultivated style—often concealed their faces in this way, for fear that some ungovernable seizure of the muscles might declare their emotion. Princess Sophia had often talked this curious custom over with Blanche.

‘It is a ridiculous invention,’ she said, ‘for the involuntary and ungovernable spasms of emotion are betrayed, not by the face, but by the hands. I, as you know, have had some experience of the table, and though no one—this sounds hardly modest, but it is true—can conceal their excitement better than I, I cannot always check little sudden movements of the fingers. The muscles of my face I have in perfect control. There is no difficulty. It is a mask; but if you watch my third and fourth fingers, you will see them, if I am more than usually interested in the game, make little movements which I simply cannot control. It is hardly a movement, it is more a vibration; and to conceal this, as you have noticed, I sometimes wear dark gloves at the tables.’

They passed on into their private room, where Pierre—he always left RhodopÉ with the Princess—was awaiting them. Even he seemed touched by the weather, and his bow lacked briskness, and his moustache looked limp.

‘Pierre, Pierre, this will never do!’ cried Sophia. ‘We are all like old rags in this weather, and we need more players. Let us have all the windows open; we shall soon have to shut them. Yet in the other room—no, no one is playing. Whom can we get? Is not the lightning amazing!’

‘There are some good players there, your Royal Highness, though no one is playing yet,’ said Pierre—‘a tall man, for instance, in a black domino.’

‘Yes, I saw him,’ said the Princess. ‘He even bowed to me as I came in, which is impertinent of a stranger.’

‘He bowed to the Queen of Monte Carlo, madam,’ said Pierre, brisking up a little, for Sophia always stimulated him, ‘not to the Princess of RhodopÉ.’

The Princess laughed.

‘But he wears a domino,’ she said; ‘he must be a bad gambler if he cannot control his face.’

‘Watch his hands, madam,’ returned Pierre; ‘they are as if of ice.’

‘Then, why does he wear a domino?’

‘Perhaps to conceal some deformity, poor gentleman!’ said Pierre, ‘or perhaps he has the dance of St. Vitus. Your Royal Highness will find he plays well.’

‘Ask him to come in, then,’ she said, ‘and ask three others; we are short to-night.’

Pierre hurried into the other room to do her bidding, and a moment afterwards returned with the desired number. It was considered a sort of brevet rank among card-players to join the Princess’s table, and her requests were always eagerly obeyed. Last of the four came the Black Domino, and as the Princess bowed to him, ‘Your Royal Highness will be so kind as to excuse my domino,’ he said; ‘it is a practice of mine to wear it.’

‘And gloves?’ asked the Princess, with interest.

‘No, madam; I have my hands under control,’ he replied.

‘That is odd,’ said she. ‘My face I have under control, you shall see, but occasionally I have to wear gloves.’

Princess Aline was not gifted by nature with the best of temper, and for the first hour she had certainly the worst of luck. Eight times she betted limit stakes on the second half-dozen—no mean form of play—and seven times she lost. The limit was one hundred napoleons, and the seven rolls were expensive. At the end of the seventh she lost her temper as well as her stake, and in a spasm of irony quite ineffectual against inanimate objects she laid two sous with much asperity on the same half-dozen, although the lowest stake was understood to be a napoleon; but her bet was addressed, not to the company, but to the offending marble. This time, of course, she won, and in a fit of rage she hurled the innocuous penny-piece which Pierre had hastily fished out of his pocket on to the floor.

The Black Domino, who was seated next her, pushed back his chair, and picked it up for her.

‘I think this slipped from the hand of your Serene Highness,’ he said gravely, and with such suavity and seriousness of tone that none thought to laugh.

The Princess meantime, as she so often was accustomed to do when beginning a night’s play, trifled and coquetted with Luck, to see in what mood the goddess was, as some gourmet who is ordering his dinner will sit over the choice of dishes with an olive or a glass of bitters, testing the quality and leanings of his appetite. She bet a napoleon or two on a single number once or twice, and lost; she bet on a few half-dozens, and lost also; she even bet occasionally on the colour, but Luck seemed to have turned its back on her. These insignificant triflings gave her time to observe the Black Domino, and before long her candour told her that Luck had been right to leave her. If she was, as Pierre said, the Queen of Monte Carlo, here indeed was the King. The domino, of course, concealed his face; but, even as Pierre had said, his hands might have been of ice. He seemed to stake nothing lower than the limit, and he never staked on more than a half-dozen. Once, when he had bet on a single number, she noticed he had just lit a match for his cigarette, and his hand was half raised, the elbow off the table, when the marble, as sometimes happens, after some few wild dashes backwards and forwards, began to slow down very suddenly. Watching it, he forgot to light his cigarette, and though his arm was unsupported, she saw his white fingers cut like a cameo across his black coat, and the edge never wavered. She grew so interested in watching him that more than once she forgot to stake on a roll, to the extreme amazement of all present, including herself.

After an hour or two Pierre went to get his supper, and in the momentary pause before the new croupier took his place she leaned forward across the table.

‘Let me have the honour of complimenting you on your play,’ she said to the Black Domino; ‘it is perfection, and I have seen a good deal of play.’

The man bowed.

‘Praise from the Princess Sophia is praise indeed,’ he said. ‘You see, your Royal Highness, I make it a rule never to get up a loser; that gives one a certain calmness. One only has to play long enough.’

She laughed.

‘A good rule,’ she said. ‘Your methods are the same as my own. It will come to a duel between us.’

‘That shall be as your Royal Highness pleases,’ he said.

Prince Victor was of that imbecile type of gambler which is usually known as the prudent; in other words, after having lost a specified sum, he closed his performances for the evening. This consummation he usually attained after about three hours’ hesitating and inglorious adventure; but this evening his rate of progress was somewhat more advanced, and he rose from the table shortly before midnight. On the stroke of the clock, without warning, the two battalions of storm burst overhead; a wicked flicker of lightning zigzagged across the darkness close outside the room where they were playing, and simultaneously, it seemed, a crack of thunder so appalling burst above them that even the Princess, who seldom showed emotion, half rose from her seat with a little cry of fright. Princess Aline buried her face in her hands; Pierre, who had returned from his supper, cried ‘Mon Dieu!’ in a trembling voice and crossed himself; the Black Domino alone remained perfectly unmoved.

‘Your Royal Highness should recollect,’ he said to Sophia, ‘that when one has heard the thunder it is proof-positive that one has not been struck by the lightning. I am quite sure we all heard the thunder. Personally, I am deafened; my ears sing. I see no has staked on this roll.’

Shortly after one Princess Aline got up rather hastily from the table. She said something in a loud, angry tone; but her words, luckily perhaps, were drowned by a prodigious explosion overhead. Outside the rain was falling like a shower of lead, and now and then a lightning flash crossing the black square of the windows would turn the water into a deluge of prismatic colour. Already the air was cooler, but the chariots of God still drove backwards and forwards over their very heads. As Aline left the table, the Black Domino asked for a whisky-and-soda, and Princess Sophia put on her gloves; for her hands trembled perceptibly, and her little finger made strange twitching movements. The Black Domino must already have made a fortune, and Princess Sophia thought with dismay that her Civil list would not be paid till September, and she was not very good at economizing.

On the retirement of Aline and Victor, the Princess had sent out for two others to take their places; but when at three o’clock Blanche also rose, she sent in vain for another. Play had ceased in the large room, and there was positively no one there. Half an hour afterwards two others got up, and the Princess, looking round the table, saw that weariness sat on all faces.

She rose at once.

‘Do not let me detain you, ladies and gentlemen, if any of you wish to go,’ she said. ‘I am infinitely obliged to you for your charming company. The storm, I think, is passing over; you can get to your hotels without a drenching. Good-night—I wish you all a very good-night.’

A sigh of relief went round the room—for it was not etiquette to leave the Princess’s table, except for her intimates, till she herself suggested it—and all rose. The Black Domino, however, lingered.

‘Am I to understand that your Royal Highness is willing to go on playing with any who wish to remain?’ he asked.

Sophia flushed with delight.

‘Mon cher inconnu,’ she cried, ‘you are inimitable! But what game shall we play? It will have to be a game for two. I will cut you through fifty packs.’

‘I would as soon play old maid, begging your Royal Highness’s pardon,’ observed the Black Domino with some heat.

‘Bezique?’ suggested Sophia.

‘Surely that is more a game for Ash Wednesdays, your Royal Highness,’ said he.

‘Suggest, then,’ she said; ‘only I will not play trente et quarante. No doubt I am unreasonable, but it bores me; and I entirely refuse to be bored. After all, roulette is the only game worth playing; but we can’t play roulette with two.’

‘I think it might be managed,’ said the Black Domino, ‘if the bank will stand aside and let us fight it out.’

‘How do you propose to manage it?’ she asked.

‘In this way. One of us—say whichever of us won the last roll—stakes on a number, or on six numbers, or a dozen, or on the colour. The other then stakes, but may not stake on more numbers than the first has staked on. Thus, if your Royal Highness stakes on a dozen, I may stake on a dozen or anything less than a dozen. In the same way, if I, staking first, back colour merely, your Royal Highness may stake on colour, on the dozen, on anything down to one number. If I, again, stake on one number, your Royal Highness must stake on one. Thus, if you stake on one number to my dozen and win, I pay you twelve times your stake. If we both stake on a dozen and you win, I pay you your stake only. It will not be roulette, but it should not be tedious.’

Sophia turned to Pierre.

‘Will it make a game?’ she asked.

Pierre wiped an excited dew from his forehead.

‘I would my father were alive to see it!’ he exclaimed piously. ‘Madam, it is the greatest gamble conceivable! Heaven will not be found to hold such a gamble.’

‘That is probably the case,’ said Sophia dryly.

They sat down again, and at the Princess’s request the Black Domino spun a coin.

‘Heads!’ she cried; and it was heads.

Sophia intended to begin gently till she saw the run of the game, and staked five napoleons on red.

‘Black,’ replied her opponent, and lost.

Sophia hesitated.

‘Red,’ she said—‘limit. I think this will make an amusing game.’

‘On number thirteen, limit,’ replied this remarkable young man.

Sophia held her breath. Hardened gambler as she was, she always let thirteen severely alone, and she heard her pulse hammering in her throat as the ball clicked and flew off at tangents. Long before it stopped she had a presentiment what would happen, and when it paused, ran on again, slowed and died, dropping into thirteen, she was not surprised.

‘I congratulate you,’ she said with entire truth, and handed him sixteen times the limit stake.

For the next half-hour after this the play was only moderately sensational. They staked on dozens and half-dozens, occasionally even on colour, and the Black Domino continued to make a handsome income. About four o’clock he yawned slightly, and it being Sophia’s turn to stake, when she backed a colour, he wearily laid down the limit stake of a hundred napoleons on number twenty.

‘My age,’ he said.

‘Indeed!’ remarked Sophia. ‘You look older;’ and her voice vibrated with suppressed emotion.

The ball slowed down. Again he had won on a single number to her sixteen.

At this she grew a little reckless; but do what she would, her own recklessness seemed to fade into a pallid system by his; the fire of her play dwindled like a candle in sunlight before his extraordinary hazards, and yet his hands might have been hands of ice.

Only once again before the pale face of the dawn began to peer in at the eastern window did they pause, and that when Pierre rose to walk up and down the room, for he was cramped with sitting. Then for the first and only time in her life the Princess showed herself inquisitive.

‘I should be honoured by knowing your name,’ she said.

‘With your Royal Highness’s permission I will keep it to myself till we have finished,’ he replied. ‘But I have on my side a question. Shall we, with your Royal Highness’s permission, place no limit on the stakes? These hundred napoleon stakes are getting a little tedious, are they not? We are used to them, and when one gets used to a thing it is better to change it.’

Now, most men when they have won a fortune would absolutely refuse to raise the stakes, and the Princess raised her hands in amazement. Never had her wildest imaginations pictured a gambler so magnificent as this. What a king, she thought, he would have made! He was royal—a man out of sight of the run of humanity, as kings should be. None but she could so well have appreciated his extraordinary self-control, none could have so estimated his scale.

‘My limit shall only be that of which I am possessed,’ she said. ‘I have still six thousand napoleons to lose, but I am afraid I have no more.’

The black Domino separated from his pile of winnings sixty rouleaux of a hundred napoleons.

‘The night is already gone,’ he said. ‘I will stake on red.’

‘And I on black,’ said the Princess; and her little finger twitched like the indicator of a telegraph.

The ball slowed down, and she rose.

‘I would play with you till the Day of Judgment,’ she said, ‘but positively I have not a penny till my Civil List is paid in September.’

‘Your Royal Highness has RhodopÉ,’ said he.

‘True; and what shall be your stake?’

‘The revenues of RhodopÉ, paid year by year to you and your heirs for ever.’

‘They are large, and “for ever” is a long time.’

‘And I am rich. Also I have luck. I will stake on the first half of the board.’

‘And I on the second,’ said the Princess; but her voice was a whisper.

Pierre’s hand so trembled that he could scarce set the wheel in motion, and the Princess’s foot beat an electric dynamo on the thick Persian rug underneath the table. The spin was a long one, but at last the ball began to slow down; it crept through one to sixteen, crawled through sixteen to thirty-two, wavered over zero, and settled into number one. They rose together.

‘A pleasant jest,’ said the Princess rather tremulously, ‘to end a memorable evening.’

‘I never jest when I am gambling,’ said the Black Domino. Then he drew himself up and removed his domino. ‘Is it possible you do not recognise me, mother?’ he said.

The Princess’s hands made a sudden quick movement together.

‘Oh, Leonard! Leonard!’ she cried; ‘when you ought to have been among the wigwams! How tiresome of you!’

‘Even so, but I preferred, like you, to be at Monte Carlo. I have been here two months, and I have played every day since I saw you last. The rest of my time was occupied in copying pages out of guidebooks.’

Sophia could not restrain herself. She threw her arms round his neck and embraced him, kissing him on both cheeks.

‘But you are magnificent!’ she cried. ‘I never thought the world contained so splendid a man! And how you have grown! I left you a little boy, now you look a man of twenty.’

‘I am nearly twenty-one,’ he said.

‘Yes, you must be. How time flies! Leonard, how can you keep your hands still? You shall teach me.’

‘It is practice, and natural predisposition to keep quiet at the tables,’ he said. ‘I inherited the second from you, dear mother, and I have had a good deal of the other on my own account.’

Pierre—and he should have been given a medal for the act—had seen that this was no interview for him to witness, and, as the others had forgotten his presence, he went softly and discreetly out of the room. For a moment there was silence. Then Leonard said:

‘I wonder if you realize what you have done, mother.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You have staked RhodopÉ and lost it.’

The Princess sat down heavily in a chair. Her emotion dazed her.

‘Leonard, you can never do it,’ she said. ‘My poor boy, you would die in a month at RhodopÉ. You would beggar the principality in a night, and a week after you would be dead of boredom. No, it is too great a sacrifice! I will not accept it. To-morrow I shall go back to RhodopÉ. I will banish myself there, and never play again. I have perfection, and that is you, and I am content. I have seen my ideal. Besides, I am a beggar.’

‘I insist on your paying me your debt,’ said Leonard. ‘You have abdicated. I am Hereditary Prince of RhodopÉ. You shall come to RhodopÉ to-morrow, and say farewell to your people; but after that you shall not come to RhodopÉ again, and I think you will not care to. I have played my last stake. I shut up every gambling-house in the principality, otherwise we shall be the mock of Europe; and I will not be Prince of a country that is one roulette-board.’

The Princess sprang up.

‘You mean it, Leonard?’ she said. ‘You will do what I have been unable to do? You will save RhodopÉ? Oh, but you cannot—you cannot! Think what you are: how young; how many glorious nights of play may lie before you!’

‘I am going to do as I said,’ he replied.

The Princess embraced him again.

‘And I shall never see RhodopÉ any more,’ she cried. ‘Oh, merciful heavens! how happy I am! But I will go with you and say farewell, and then I will come back to Monte Carlo for ever and ever. I will wear a lace cap at RhodopÉ, and shed real tears. I will invoke all kinds of blessings and that sort of thing on everybody. The poor Princess abdicates because of the burden of State; she leaves the burden on the shoulders of her dear son. The laws of dramatic propriety make me go to RhodopÉ once more. Oh, Leonard, although I was determined that you should shake off this fatal habit of gambling, I thought but poorly of you when I imagined you were taking an interest in mosques and wigwams; but they answered their purpose, you naughty boy! Those letters you wrote me the acme of absurdity. You shall tell me all your adventures to-morrow. Come! let us get home; it is day.’