"I have come to tell you that you are going to get your diamonds back."
If Marien's demeanor were a pose, it must have proved that she really was what her press agents claimed,—the greatest actress on the English speaking stage. She did not start, or speak. For a few seconds not even the direction of her glance was changed. Then her face did shift sufficiently for the black piercing eyes to stab straight into Rollie's, while her brows were lifted inquiringly. The glance said, "Well, go on!"
The young man obeyed desperately: "I am an ambassador for the—"
Still Miss Dounay did not speak; she did not move nor change an expression even; and yet Rollie felt himself interrupted. He could not tell how this was done, but he was sure that this woman had detected him in the first note of insincerity and by a thought-wave had emphatically said, "Don't lie to me!"
All at once, too, he realized that this motionless, marble-lipped creature sitting there before him was more implacable, more potential for evil than the raging tigress he had expected to confront. He felt somehow that she was not a woman, but a super-devil into whose clutches he was being drawn. He even had a sense that he was not going to be allowed any increased issue of moral stock on the ground of telling this woman the truth. He was going to tell her the truth because he had to, because she hypnotized it out of him.
"I say," he began, and stopped to wet his lips, but found his tongue so furred that it could not function in that behalf. "I say," he went on again, croaking hoarsely, "that I am the thief."
"You? The banker?"
Rollie fell to wondering how blue vitriol bites. Certainly it could not be more biting than the sarcasm in look and tone with which the woman had asked this question.
"Yes, I—"
The young man was going to prepare the soil for throwing himself upon her mercy—this woman whom he was now positive knew no such thing as mercy—by telling her about his defalcation; but in the wooden state of his mind, one quivering gleam of intelligence suggested that it was quite unnecessary to tell her anything about his defalcation; that it might give her an added set of pincers for the torture she might choose to inflict.