Each fixed his eyes on the other, in stern and searching scrutiny, and cup for cup, drank in slow and regular alternation.

The debauch, which had hitherto presented a spectacle of brutal degradation and violence, now that it was restricted to two men only--each equally unimpressed by the scenes of horror he had beheld, each vying with the other for the attainment of the supreme of depravity--assumed an appearance of hardly human iniquity; it became a contest for a satanic superiority of sin.
For some time little alteration appeared in the countenances of either of the suicide-rivals; but they had now drunk to that final point of excess at which wine either acts as its own antidote, or overwhelms in fatal suffocation the pulses of life.

The crisis in the strife was approaching for both, and the first to experience it was Marcus.
Vetranio, as he watched him, observed a dark purple flush overspreading his face, hitherto pale, almost colourless.

His eyes suddenly dilated; he panted for breath.

The vase of wine, when he strove with a last effort to fill his cup from it, rolled from his hand to the floor.