We are shown a man of the world taking life lightly till suddenly he is confronted with that awful tragedy of death. While dining with his fiancée, after the opera, in one of the numerous Parisian cafés, she becomes very much annoyed by the constant gaze of a stranger seated at the opposite table. Turn which way she might, there were those dark eyes staring boldly at her. At last, unable to stand it any longer, she calls her companion’s attention to the ungentlemanly and insolent conduct of the stranger. Loud words are spoken between the two gentlemen. A blow, a challenge, and a duel to be fought at dawn, are the outcome of simply a look, yet what tragedy sometimes lurks in a glance of the eyes! Midnight finds the Duke in his room arranging with his seconds for the duel at dawn. Filled with hot anger and excitement, he chooses pistols as the weapons and insists that the duel shall be fatal to one or both. His old servant is instructed to call him at four in the morning, and the man of honor is left alone with his thoughts. Two o’clock and the Duke is still awake. Deprived of sleep, and his hot anger cooled, the slow watches of the night begin to tell on his nerves. The slightest noise in the street startles him. He cannot force the thought of the coming dawn from his mind. Three o’clock and he is now pale and haggard. Self-pity and fear creep from the shadows of the room and drag him down to a nervous wreck. His hand trembles. Glass after glass of wine fails to bring relief. His brain keeps crying to his body, “The dawn, the dawn, the dawn!” He picks up the revolver from the table. It falls from his nervous grasp. His will fails to respond to the command, “Be steady be calm,” while the lamp casts its golden beams over a grinning death’s head that lies on the table. It mocks and jeers at him. He tries to shut it from his sight. At last his trembling hand reaches the light and turns it out, but through the window the pale moonlight steals and cheats him of his success. The symbol of death only mocks him more in the moonlight. Oh, to shut it out of his sight! To stop his brain from crying out, “The dawn, the dawn!” At last he rises and closes the shutters. As the last beam catches his white, terror-stricken face, we see a coward. A coward stamped in every line, every feature. The next moment the shutters are closed, and then darkness, silence. A sudden flash in the night and all is still! At four the old servant comes in to call his master. As he throws aside the closed windows, the first faint rays of sunlight stealing through disclose to view the white, cold face of the Duke resting on the table, a tiny scarlet stream gliding from beneath his left temple across the white paper, and losing itself in the gloom. The sun shines strongly on the fare of the dead Duke, and the old servant knows then that it is dawn. No more powerful silent drama has ever been presented upon the moving picture canvas than De Maupassant’s famous story. “A Coward.” It is a picture that cannot be forgotten.