In a guesthouse on the Riviera, a married woman runs off with a young man she met the day before, and the other guests are outraged. Only the narrator defends her. Soon afterwards, an elderly Englishwoman, Mrs C., confides to him a secret she has kept for more than twenty years: a day in her life that began one evening at the Monte Carlo casino, watching the hands of a young gambler.
Stefan Zweig is a master of the confession and of sudden passion: little by little we understand how twenty-four hours can turn a whole life upside down.
You can read this short story in one sitting in the language you are learning.
