...The appointed day arrived. From far and near the people gathered, and thronged the great galleries of the arena, and crowds, unable to gain admittance, massed themselves against its outside walls. The king and his court were in their places, opposite the twin doors, those fateful portals, so terrible in their similarity.
All was ready. The signal was given. A door beneath the royal party opened, and the lover of the princess walked into the arena. Tall, beautiful, fair, his appearance was greeted with a low hum of admiration and anxiety. Half the audience had not known so grand a youth had lived among them. No wonder the princess loved him! What a terrible thing for him to be there!
As the youth advanced into the arena he turned, as the custom was, to bow to the king, but he did not think at all of that royal personage.
His eyes were fixed upon that spot, to the right of his majesty, where the princess should have been seated. But the spot stood vacant.
The princess was not there.
Brave and steadfast he was- and remained- yet his heart sank down to the very soles of his semibarbaric boots; and his head reeled momentarily with the shock of disappointment. He had counted upon her presence there. He knew her well enough to feel sure that nothing short of some unimaginable catastrophe could have prevented her from being there. And he had had every confidence, moreover, that she would succeed in finding out the matter.
Oh yes, he knew the princess. He understood her nature- better perhaps than even she herself did. He knew, faced with the impossible choice of the lady or the tiger, which she would inevitably have chosen for him, long before the princess in her anguish had at last succeeded in making up her own mind.
He was ready. Life was sweet; and he by no means relished the thought of a hideous death at the claws of the tiger. But at any rate it would be over quickly. Whereas, a lifetime of marriage to someone- anyone, however beautiful- who was not the princess, with whom he was one in soul- how interminably, unendurably long!
...And yet, without the princess to guide him in the choosing of the door, he must needs choose for himself, and take his chance.
He turned, and with a firm and rapid step he walked across the empty space. Every heart stopped beating, every breath was held, every eye was fixed immovably upon that man.
With only the briefest possible moment's pause for consideration, he reached out his hand, and opened the door on the left.
Out of the breathless, expectant stillness of that transfixed arena, there was an audible, collective gasp; a moment of stunned silence; then, an uproar, the likes of which had never been heard in that arena nor anywhere else broke out, as forth from the open door came- no fearsome tiger; not any mere lady; but THE PRINCESS HERSELF.
After all, any woman enterprising enough to have cracked the kingdom's most closely guarded secret could surely also succeed in getting herself stationed behind the door! Of course, this had meant she would be unable to signal her lover, and thus risked his selecting the wrong door; but, if he *DID* open the right door- or rather, that is to say, the left one...
The tumult of the crowd continued over the pealing brass bells, as the princess and her lover were wed, and did not even begin to die down throughout the whole ceremony; drowning out even the furious bellows of the enraged and livid king- who was voicing his displeasure in the most strenuous manner. But in the very act of choosing the door, the youth had been judged and vindicated, his love for the princess irrefutably proven innocent of wrong; and if innocent, then what possible remaining objection to their marriage? The arena had given the verdict, and the king himself, for all the irresistibility of his authority and imperious dominance of his will, was powerless against it.