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“And the number of the ticket?”

“Oh yes! There’s the number of the ticket too. But
stay... wait!

No, I say! Anyway, the number of our series is
there! Anyway, you understand…”

Looking broad at his wife, Ivan Dmitritch gave a
senseless smile, like a baby when a bright object

is shown to it. His wife smiled too; it was as
pleasant to her as to him that he only mentioned
the series, and did not try to find out the number

of the winning ticket. To torment and tantalize
oneself with hopes of possible, fortune is so sweet, so thrilling!

“It is our series,” said Ivan Dwitritch, after a long silence. “So there is a probability that we
have won! It’s only a probability, but there is!”

“Well, now look!”
Wait a little. We have plenty of time to be disappointed. It’s on the second line from the top.

That’s not money, but power, capital! And in a minute I shall look at the list, and there-26!
Eh? I say, what if we really have won? The husband and wife began laughing and staring at

one another in silence. The possibility of winning bewildered them; they could not have
said, could not have dreamed, what they both needed the money for, what they would buy,
where they would go. They thought only of the figure 9, 499 and pictured all their dreams in

their imagination, while somehow they could not think of the happiness itself which was so
possible.

Ivan Dmitritch, holding the paper in his hand, walked several times from corner to corner,
and only when he had recovered from the first impression began dreaming a little.

“And if we have won,” he said — “why, it will be a new life, it will be a transformation! The
ticket is yours, but if it were mine I should, first of all, of course, spend some of the money on
real property in the shape of an estate; some of it on immediate expenses, new furnishing,

travelling… paying debts, and so on… The rest I would put in the bank and get interest on it.”

“Yes, an estate, that would be nice,” said his wife, sitting down and dropping her hands in her
lap. “Somewhere in the Tula or Oryol provinces… In the first place, we need a summer villa,
and besides, it would always bring in an income.”

And pictures came crowding in his mind, each more gracious and poetical than the last. And

in all these pictures he saw himself well-fed, serene, healthy and even warm!

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