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.