I'm starting to wonder if they didn't both blink as the depth of the abyss between them became obvious.
At that point they both walked backwards, neither ready to pull a lever that might undo sixty odd years of attempted European unity.
....And so they kicked the can down the road, maybe hoping for a deus ex machina to force events without their personal complicity.
Having said that although they both walked away a bit battered by the encounter, they'll both live to fight more battles in what looms to be a long war.
Schauble is a bit weaker, both because of his descendant arc of age and diminishing returns while Varoufakis' star is rising, young Turk that he is.
And because public opinion in Germany seems to have shifted slightly this last fortnight, risking Schauble being left in the political cold.
Also I think Germans are staying to resent their leaders putting them at loggerheads with the rest of Europe. Track record not great here...

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty