“Come, come, let’s get on with the charade,” urged the Man from Outside.
On the instant’s pause, in which Zoe looked at her lover almost 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.