"Figure de Christ, but it is true, as true as death! Listen, M'sieu' Jean
Jacques. You are going to kill me, but listen so that you will know how
to speak to her afterwards, understanding what I said as I died."
"Get on--quick!" growled Jean Jacques with white wrinkled lips and the
sun in his agonized eyes. George Masson continued his pleading. "You were
always a man of mind"--Jean Jacques' fierce agitation visibly subsided,
and a surly sort of vanity crept into his face--"and you married a girl
who cared more for what you did than what you thought--that is sure, for
I know women. I am not married, and I have had much to do with many of
them. I will tell you the truth. I left the West because of a woman--of
two women. I had a good business, but I could not keep out of trouble
with women. They made it too easy for me."
"Peacock-pig!" exclaimed Jean Jacques with an ugly sneer.
"Let a man when he is dying tell all the truth, to ease his mind," said
the master-carpenter with a machiavellian pretence and cunning. "It was
vanity, it was, as you say; it was the peacock in me made me be the
friend of many women and not the husband of one. I came down here to
Quebec from the Far West to get away from consequences. It was expensive.
I had to sacrifice. Well, here I am in trouble again--my last trouble,
and with the wife of a man that I respect and admire, not enough to keep
my hands off his wife, but still that I admire.
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