The Lighted Match

In the gardens of the hotel, the paths lay ankle-deep in scattered

confetti. Already the scores of lights were going out and those that

remained shone on the wreckage of an entertainment ended.

Cara had gone to her rooms. In his own, at a window commanding the

garden, Benton sat in an attitude of lethargic dejection, staring down

on the lingering illuminations. His brain still swirled. A dozen times

he told himself that matters were precisely as they had been; that the

developments of the evening had brought no change, save a momentary

belief in a mistaken rumor and a few wild dreams. When he had waited in

the rotunda for Cara, he had known Karyl to be living. He knew it now,

yet it seemed as though his life-rival had died and come again to life.

It seemed, too, as though his own prison doors had swung open, and while

he stood on the free threshold had slammed inward upon him, sweeping him

back, broken and bruised with their clanging momentum.

To-morrow he must go away.

Benton looked at his watch. It was after four o'clock.

Then a knock came on the door. Benton did not respond. He feared that

young Harcourt, belated and flushed with brandy-acid-soda, might have

seen the light of his transom and paused for gossip. The thought he

could not endure. Again he heard and ignored the knock, then the door

opened slowly, and turning his head, he recognized Karyl on his

threshold.

Just at that moment the American could not have spoken. He had come to a

point of pent-up emotion which can move only by breaking dams. He

pointed to a chair, but Karyl shook his head.

For a while neither spoke. Karyl's hair was rumpled; his eyes darkly

ringed, and the line of his lips close set. Benton glanced out of his

window. Across the gardens the wall was growing blanker, as lighted

panes fell dark. One window, which he knew was Cara's, still showed a

parallelogram of light behind its drawn shade. Karyl in passing followed

the glance. He, too, recognized the window.

At last the Galavian spoke.

"Can you spare me a half-hour?"

Benton nodded. He would have preferred any other time. He needed

opportunity for self-collection.

Again Karyl spoke.

"Benton, I might as well be brief. There are two of us. In this world

there is room for only one. One of us is an interloper."

The American felt the blood rush to his face; he felt it pound at the

back of his eyeballs, at the base of his brain. An instinct of fury,

which was only half-sane, flooded him. Red spots danced before his eyes.

The other had spoken slowly, almost gently, yet he could read only

challenge in the words, and the challenge was one he hungered to accept.