In fact, I had known the adjutant for several years; more than
once I had seen him in the full swing of a game, surrounded by officers,
and I had remarked his handsome, rather gloomy and always passionless
calm face, his deliberate Malo-Russian pronunciation, his handsome
belongings and horses, his bold, manly figure, and above all his skill
and self-restraint in carrying on the game accurately and agreeably.
More than once, I am sorry to say, as I looked at his plump white hands
with a diamond ring on the index-finger, passing out one card after
another, I grew angry with that ring, with his white hands, with the
whole of the adjutant's person, and evil thoughts on his account arose
in my mind. But as I afterwards reconsidered the matter coolly, I
persuaded myself that he played more skilfully than all with whom he
happened to play: the more so, because as I heard his general
observations concerning the game,--how one ought not to back out when
one had laid the smallest stake, how one ought not to leave off in
certain cases as the first rule for honest men, and so forth, and so
forth,--it was evident that he was always on the winning side merely
from the fact that he played more sagaciously and coolly than the rest
of us.
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