thought--!"

He ended with a laugh not pleasant to hear, for it was coarse with
sardonic mirth; yet it had also an unreasonable apprehension; for why
should he fear the husband of the woman who had done that husband such
an injury!

"She treated you pretty bad, didn't she--not much heart, had Carmen!" he
added.

"Sit down. I want to talk to you," said Jean Jacques, motioning to two
chairs by a table at the side of the room. This table was in the middle
of the room when the man under the lamp-Hugo Stolphe was his name--had
left it last. Why had the table been moved?

"Why should I sit down, and what are you doing here?--I want to know
that," Stolphe demanded. Jean Jacques' hands were opening and shutting.
"Because I want to talk to you. If you don't sit down, I'll give you no
chance at all.... Sit down!" Jean Jacques was smaller than Stolphe,
but he was all whipcord and leather; the other was sleek and soft, but
powerful too; and he had one of those savage natures which go blind with
hatred, and which fight like beasts. He glanced swiftly round the room.

"There is no weapon here," said Jean Jacques, nodding. "I have put
everything away--so you could not hurt me if you wanted.... Sit down!"

To gain time Stolphe sat down, for he had a fear that Jean Jacques was
armed, and might be a madman armed--there were his feet bare on the
brown painted boards. They looked so strange, so uncanny. He surely must
be a madman if he wanted to do harm to Hugo Stolphe; for Hugo Stolphe
had only "kept" the woman who had left her husband, not because of
himself, but because of another man altogether--one George Masson. Had
not Carmen herself told him that before she and he lived together? What
grudge could Carmen's husband have against Hugo Stolphe?

Jean Jacques sat down also, and, leaning on the table said: "Once I was
a fool and let the other man escape-George Masson it was. Because of
what he did, my wife left me."

His voice became husky, but he shook his throat, as it were, cleared it,
and went on. "I won't let you go. I was going to kill George Masson--I
had him like that!" He opened and shut his hand with a gesture of
fierce possession. "But I did not kill him. I let him go. He was so
clever--cleverer than you will know how to be. She said to me--my wife
said to me, when she thought I had killed him, 'Why did you not
fight him? Any man would have fought him.' That was her view. She was
right--not to kill without fighting.