"Miss Sophie," replied Bemperlein, "you know we cannot always be quite open, even with our most intimate friends--and there is no one in the wide world I would trust rather than you--because our secrets are in many cases not our own, but are shared by others, and have to be kept sacred for their sake."
"Why, Bemperly!" said Sophie, "you surely do not think I want to pry into your secrets! I am neither so impertinent nor so curious. Let us drop the matter and talk of something else!"
"No, no," exclaimed Bemperlein, eagerly, "let us speak of it! You do not know how I have longed to talk with you--about--certain things--certain persons--who----"
Mr. Bemperlein had once more seized the poker, which had not yet cooled off, and stirred the coals more assiduously than ever. Sophie shook her head as she watched his doing so. It occurred to her that Bemperlein might have made too great exertions in his chemical analysis, and that his mind might have been somewhat injured.
"As for my not coming here," continued Bemperlein, of a sudden, "you were quite right. I stayed away because I did not wish to meet Oswald Stein here."
"But," said Sophie, "Franz told me you and Oswald Stein had been very good friends. How did you fall out?"
"How?" said Mr. Bemperlein. "Why, Miss Sophie, that is exactly what I cannot tell you, much as I would like to tell you. Would you be friends with somebody, or rather would you not try in every way to avoid meeting somebody, who had mortally offended a third person whom you love and revere?"
"Certainly," replied Sophie, "for then he would have offended myself. But are you quite sure that that is so? Have you heard both parties? As for myself, I am not so enchanted with Mr. Stein; or, to tell the truth, I dislike him the more the oftener I see him; but Franz, who is very clever, and a capital judge of men, is quite enthusiastic about him. How could that be if Stein were a bad man?"
"I did not say he was bad," replied Bemperlein, working hard at a big lump of coal; "bad is a very relative idea, and what I call acting badly, Mr. Stein calls, perhaps, only acting thoughtlessly, in a cavalier manner, or some such name. But I call it acting badly, if a man----"
Here Bemperlein interrupted himself, and poked more violently at the coal than ever.