“Why is it lucky that I have not told him?” Mrs. Vanderlyn asked, now.  “Of course he’ll have to know.  Everyone must know.”

It broke his self-control.  “That—­my little girl is—­no, no, no!” he faltered.  “Ah, it is not true!  She is not guilty!”

She tried to show a sympathetic smile, but in it there was little actual sympathy.  “Very natural that you should think so,” she admitted.  “It came as a great shock—­and a surprise—­even to me.  I had thought she was unusually well-bred, refined.”  She sighed, as if the world were rather hard on her, to fool her so in one she had believed to be an admirable person.  “But let me tell you that she has great admiration for fine jewels.  I have noted that, before.  And—­the temptation was too strong for her.  Weak spot, somewhere, in her, don’t you see?  It was too strong for that weak spot.”

“Oh, Madame, I—­”

She raised her hand as if to ward away his protests.  Clearly she believed that having told him all about it, as gently as she had, she had accomplished her whole Christian duty and was under not the slightest further obligation to be merciful.  “I may as well tell you,” she warned him, “that I brought an officer with me.  To save your natural feelings, I requested him to wait downstairs a moment and then to come and wait outside the door—­er—­um—­in case of trouble.  Just a little necessary precaution, my dear sir.  A woman, coming to a place like this, alone, you see—­”

He smiled.  “Quite natural,” he answered.  “Why, I might have eaten you!” But in the absorption of his talk with her he had forgotten that, as he went to the door, he had seen a blue coat and brass buttons, had recognized the face of his old enemy, Moresco.  Now the realization that, armed and uniformed, a minion of the forces of the city’s law and order, that cheap foe was actually waiting for his little Anna—­for his gentle, big-eyed, soft-voiced Anna!—­came to him with a new and dreadful shock.  His frame stiffened and his poor old, soft hands clenched into pathetic fists.  “He shall not—­” he began with a brave bluster, but then stopped, realizing his own helplessness.

“What can you do?” asked Mrs. Vanderlyn, and smiled again that twisted little smile which was her counterfeit of the sweet look of sympathy.  “I am only doing what is right and what is necessary.  I am, naturally, most indignant at this betrayal of my confidence.  I will not interfere to save the girl from justice!”

From behind the kitchen door, at this, Herr Kreutzer thought he heard a sound as of swift breath indrawn through tight-set, angry teeth, but was not sure.  It might have been his own.  He was so terribly excited that he did not know.  Certainly, from now, his angry breathing was quite audible.  His little Anna taken to a prison!  No!  “She shall not be punished!” he exclaimed in wrath.

Mrs. Vanderlyn looked at him, for a second, as might one look at an unpleasant child who is a disappointment.  Then she for the first time showed a little wrath towards him.  Up to that moment her calm, maddening attitude of skin-deep sympathy had been unbroken.  She spoke sharply, now, however, as she countered:  “That will not depend on you.”