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Updated: June 6, 2025
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.
Dubarre asked, nodding towards the glasses. "Two of the glasses have poison in them, two have good red wine only. We will move them about and then drink. Both may die, or only one of us." Villiard looked at the other with contracting, questioning eyes. "You would play that game with me?" he asked, in a mechanical voice. "It would give me great pleasure." The voice had a strange, ironical tone.
That night he might have been seen feeling about the grass in a moon-lit garden. At last he put something in his pocket with a quick, harsh chuckle of satisfaction. It was a little black bottle with a well-worn cork. They met at last, Dubarre, and Villiard, the man who had stolen from him the woman he loved. Both had wronged the woman, but Villiard most, for he had let her die because of jealousy.
"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. The man who died at Alma had a Kilkenny brogue that you could not cut with a knife, but he was called Kilquhanity, a name as Scotch as McGregor. Kilquhanity was a retired soldier, on pension, and Pontiac was a place of peace and poverty.
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!
Villiard took the four glasses filled with the wine and laid them on a shelf against the wall, then began to put the table in order for their supper, and to take the pot from the fire. Dubarre noticed that just above where the glasses stood on the shelf a crucifix was hanging, and that red crystal sparkled in the hands and feet where the nails should be driven in.
The fire, and the wind, and the watch seemed the only living things besides themselves, perched there between heaven and earth. At length the meal was finished, and the two turned in their chairs towards the fire. There was no other light in the room, and on the faces of the two, still and cold, the flame played idly. "When?" said Dubarre at last. "Not yet," was the quiet reply.
"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.
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.
"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!
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