involuntarily, and without fully understanding what he said, someone else
started forward with a smothered exclamation--of anger, of horror, of
dismay. It was Jean Jacques. He was suddenly transformed.

His eyes were darkened by hideous memory, his face alight with passion.
He caught from the girl's hands the guitar--Carmen's forgotten guitar
which he had not seen for seven years--how well he knew it! With both
hands he broke it across his knee. The strings, as they snapped, gave a
shrill, wailing cry, like a voice stopped suddenly by death. Stepping
jerkily to the fireplace he thrust it into the flame.

"Ah, there!" he said savagely. "There--there!" When he turned round
slowly again, his face--which he had never sought to control before he
had his great Accident seven years ago--was under his command.
A strange, ironic-almost sardonic-smile was on his lips.

"It's in the play," he said.

"No, it's not in the charade, Monsieur Barbille," said the Man from
Outside fretfully.

"That is the way I read it, m'sieu'," retorted Jean Jacques, and he made
a motion to the fiddler.

"The dance! The dance!" he exclaimed.

But yet he looked little like a man who wished to dance, save upon a
grave.