The story begins at a where the host, who is a , and a young lawyer make a wager of million dollars. The young lawyer claims that life is preferable to death, and he bets that he can survive a voluntary imprisonment of years. The banker bets that he can not withstand the solitude.
The years of imprisonment take place in a found on the banker's estate. The can have anything he wishes to eat, drink, or read, but he may have no with any other human being or the outside . However, the prisoner can end his situation he pleases.
Over the years, the prisoner writes asking for different things, and the banker begins to observe some in the desires of the captive. The prisoner changes his eating, drinking, and smoking habits, as well as his selection of and studies. As the end of the fifteen approaches, the banker becomes worried that he is going to the bet, and about the fact that he doesn't have the to pay the if he wins. So one night he goes to visit the prisoner, planning on him, and he finds him sitting upright, sound . The lawyer now looks skeletal, and appears really although he is only in his . But before he puts an end to the lawyer's , the banker finds a note written by the lawyer renouncing the money because he has learned to despise life.
The next day, the day of the fifteen year sentence, the banker finds that the captive has indeed left his , forfeiting the money to prove he truly all of what the banker lives by.