"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. That is why I did not kill you at
once when I knew.
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