"I agreed to his plan. Hayden led the way into the room where the admiral had been playing. We went up to the table, over which the green-shaded light still burned. On it lay two decks of cards, face up. Hayden picked up the nearest deck, and shuffled it nervously. His face--God, it was like the snow out there on the mountain." Kendrick closed his eyes, and Magee gazed at him in silent pity. "He held out the deck," went on the exile softly, "he told me to draw. He said if the card was black, he'd clear out. 'But if it's red, David,' he said, 'why--you--got to go.' I held my breath, and drew. It was a full minute before I dared look at the card in my hand. Then I turned it over and it was--red--a measly little red two-spot. I don't suppose a man ever realizes all at once what such a moment means. I remember that I was much cooler than Hayden. It was I who had to brace him up. I--I even tried to joke with him. But his face was like death. He hardly spoke at all at first, and then suddenly he became horribly talkative. I left him--talking wildly--I left Reuton. I left the girl to whom I was engaged." To break the silence that followed, Mr. Magee leaned forward and stirred the logs. "I don't want to bore you," Kendrick said, trying to smile. "I went to a little town in South America. There was no treaty of extradition there--nor anything else civilized and decent. I smoked cigarettes and drank what passed for rum, on the balcony of an impossible hotel, and otherwise groped about for the path that leads to the devil. After a year, I wrote to Hayden. He answered, urging me to stay away. He intimated that the thing we had done was on my shoulders. I was ashamed, frightfully unhappy. I didn't dare write to--her. I had disgraced her. I asked Hayden about her, and he wrote back that she was shortly to marry him. After that I didn't want to come back to Reuton. I wanted most--to die. "The years crept by on the balcony of that impossible hotel. Six of them. The first in bitter memories, memories of a red card that danced fiendishly before my eyes when I closed them--the last in a fierce biting desire to come back to the world I had left. At last, a few months ago, I wrote to another college friend of mine, Drayton, and told him the whole story. I did not know that he had been elected prosecutor in Reuton. He answered with a kind pitying letter--and finally I knew the horrible truth. Nothing had ever happened. The thing we had done had never been discovered. Hayden had lied. He had even lied about his engagement to Myra Thornhill. There, he had made a reality out of what was simply his great desire. "You can imagine my feelings. Six years in a tomb, a comic opera sort of tomb, where a silly surf was forever pounding, and foolish palms kept waving. Six years--for nothing. Six years, while Hayden, guiltier than I, stayed behind to enjoy the good things of life, to plead for the girl whose lover he had banished.