The direct attack, voicing the thought she had striven to suppress, brought the colour surging to her cheeks. "Don't you understand," she cried. "He is a thief—a thief."
"He seems to be a rare plucky one anyway," answered Flurscheim. Meriel laughed hysterically. "There! There! There!" said the connoisseur in his most soothing manner, "I didn't mean to hurt you, and I can see you are very much upset. Perhaps we will talk over this bad business later and see what we can manage between us."
There was so much kindness in his manner, so real a delicacy in his whole attitude, that Meriel felt more than ever inclined to confide the whole story to him. He was a man of the world. He owed Guy a debt of gratitude. She had not promised Guy to keep silence. He had never asked her, for he had realised that the request would have been an insult. There was little time to argue the matter with herself. Flurscheim was impatient to depart. She obeyed the impulse.
"Mr. Flurscheim," she said, "will you treat what I tell you as strictly confidential, and take no action without my permission?"
"I give you my word," he said gravely.
Meriel glanced round her. No living soul was in sight. They stood alone upon the sea-wall. Flurscheim noted her glance.
"There's no chance of being overheard," he remarked. At a little distance was a stile in a rail fence which separated one meadow from another. Flurscheim pointed to it.
"Come along," he said brusquely, and there the girl made known to her companion the story of Guy's life as she had heard it from his lips.
"He is not so greatly to blame, is he, Mr. Flurscheim?" she asked eagerly, when she had finished the narration. "And yet nothing can alter the fact that he is a thief."
The Jew had listened with growing amazement. To him the story seemed the wildest, maddest romance he had ever heard. He could scarcely believe his ears. To Meriel's appeal he could only reply at first with an Hebraic invocation, uttered beneath his breath. Then he asked, "And you really think he was telling the truth?"