FullReads

“I, of my first lie.”

“That apple was the sweetest fruit I ever tasted.”

“And I took the penalty of the lie, but I had no sorrow.”

Again there was silence.

“Now?” asked Villiard, after an hour had passed. “I am ready.”

They came to the table.

“Shall we bind our eyes?” asked Dubarre. “I do not know the glasses that hold the poison.”

“Nor I the bottle that held it. I will turn my back, and do you change about the glasses.”

Villiard turned his face towards the timepiece on the wall. As he did so it began to strike–a clear, silvery chime: “One! two! three–!”

Before it had finished striking both men were facing the glasses again.

“Take one,” said Dubarre.

Villiard took the one nearest himself. Dubarre took one also. Without a word they lifted the glasses and drank.

“Again,” said Dubarre.

“You choose,” responded Villiard.

Dubarre lifted the one nearest himself, and Villiard picked up the other. Raising their glasses again, they bowed to each other and drank.

The watch struck twelve, and stopped its silvery chiming.

They both sat down, looking at each other, the light of an enormous chance in their eyes, the tragedy of a great stake in their clinched hands; but the deeper, intenser power was in the face of Dubarre, the explorer.

There was more than power; malice drew down the brows and curled the sensitive upper lip. Each man watched the other for knowledge of his own fate. The glasses lay straggling along the table, emptied of death and life.

All at once a horrible pallor spread over the face of Villiard, and his head jerked forward. He grasped the table with both hands, twitching and trembling. His eyes stared wildly at Dubarre, to whose face the flush of wine had come, whose look was now maliciously triumphant.

Villiard had drunk both glasses of the poison!

“I win!” Dubarre stood up. Then, leaning over the table towards the dying man, he added: “You let her die-well! Would you know the truth? She loved you–always.”

Villiard gasped, and his look wandered vaguely along the opposite wall.

Dubarre went on. “I played the game with you honestly, because–because it was the greatest man could play. And I, too, sinned against her. Now die! She loved you–murderer!”

The man’s look still wandered distractedly along the wall. The sweat of death was on his face; his lips were moving spasmodically.

Suddenly his look became fixed; he found voice. “Pardon–Jesu!” he said, and stiffened where he sat. His eyes were fixed on the jewelled crucifix. Dubarre snatched it from the wall, and hastening to him held it to his lips: but the warm sparkle of the rubies fell on eyes that were cold as frosted glass. Dubarre saw that he was dead.

“Because the woman loved him!” he said, gazing curiously at the dead man.

He turned, went to the door and opened it, for his breath choked him.

All was still on the wooded heights and in the wide valley.

“Because the woman loved him he repented,” said Dubarre again with a half-cynical gentleness as he placed the crucifix on the dead man’s breast.