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