You
owe it to yourselves and to the situation to be brief, and, if I may say
so, you owe it to me. I am not a practised Ananias."
"As well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, m'sieu'," returned Masson.
"I must beg that you will make your farewells of a minute and no more,"
replied the Clerk of the Court firmly. He took out his watch. "It is six
o'clock. I will come again at three minutes past six. That is long enough
for any farewell--even on the gallows."
Not daring to look at the face of the woman, he softly disappeared into
the other room, and shut the door without a sound.
"Too good for this world," remarked the master-carpenter when the door
closed tight. He said it after the disappearing figure and not to Carmen.
"I don't suppose he ever kissed a real grown-up woman in his life. It
would have shattered his frail little carcass if, if"--he turned to his
companion--"if you had kissed him, Carmen. He's made of
tissue-paper,--not tissue--and apple-jelly. Yes, but a stiff little
backbone, too, or he'd not have faced me down."
Masson talked as though he were trying to gain time. "He said three
minutes," she returned with a look of death in her face. As George Masson
had talked with the Clerk of the Court, she had come to see, in so far as
agitation would permit, that he was not the same as when he left her by
the river the evening before.
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