dismiss it. "She was beautiful and splendid; she had been
a queen down there in Quebec. You lied to her, and she was blind at
first--I can see it all. She believed so easily--but yes, always! There
she was what she was, and you were what you are, not a Frenchman, not
Catholic, and an American--no, not an American--a South American. But
no, not quite a South American, for there was the Portuguese nigger in
you--Sit down!"

Jean Jacques was on his feet bending over the enraged mongrel. He had
spoken the truth, and Carmen's last lover had been stung as though a
serpent's tooth was in his flesh. Of all things that could be said about
him, that which Jean Jacques said was the worst--that he was not all
white, that he had nigger blood! Yet it was true; and he realized that
Jean Jacques must have got his information in Shilah itself where he
had been charged with it. Yet, raging as he was, and ready to take the
Johnny Crapaud--that is the name by which he had always called Carmen's
husband--by the throat, he was not yet sure that Jean Jacques was
unarmed. He sat still under an anger greater than his own, for there was
in it that fanaticism which only the love or hate of a woman could breed
in a man's mind.

Suddenly Stolphe laughed outright, a crackling, mirthless, ironical
laugh; for it really was absurdity made sublime that this man, who
had been abandoned by his wife, should now want to kill one who had
abandoned her! This outdid Don Quixote over and over.

"Well, what do you want?" he asked.

"I want you to fight," said Jean Jacques. "That is the way. That was
Carmen's view. You shall have your chance to live, but I shall throw you
in the river, and you can then fight the river. The current is swift,
the banks are steep and high as a house down below there. Now, I am
ready...!"

He had need to be, for Stolphe was quick, kicking the chair from beneath
him, and throwing himself heavily on Jean Jacques. He had had his day at
that in South America, and as Jean Jacques Barbille had said, the water
was swift and deep, and the banks of the Watloon high and steep!

But Jean Jacques was unconscious of everything save a debt to be
collected for a woman he had loved, a compensation which must be taken
in flesh and blood. Perhaps at the moment, as Stolphe had said to
himself, he was a little mad, for all his past, all his plundered,
squandered, spoiled life was crying out at him like a hundred ghosts,
and he was fighting with b