protesting hand. "There you are mistaken;
but it is no matter. At the end of to-day I would have been an
adulterer, if you hadn't found out. I don't complain of the word. But
see, as a philosopher"--Jean Jacques jerked a haughty assent--"as a
philosopher you will want to know how and why it is. Carmen will never
tell you--a woman never tells the truth about such things, because she
does not know how. She does not know the truth ever, exactly, about
anything. It is because she is a woman. But I would like to tell you the
exact truth; and I can, because I am a man. For what she did you are as
much to blame as she ... no, no--not yet!"

Jean Jacques' hand had spasmodically tightened on the lever as though he
would wrench the gates open, and a snarl came from his lips.

"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. It is
my weakness that I could not be, as a man, honourable to Jean Jacques
Barbille. And so I pay the price; so I have to go without time to make
my will. Bless heaven above, I have no wife--"

"If you had a wife you would not be dying now.