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Guste blushed. Diederich turned towards the door. "Then I had better be going."

"What on earth did he want?" she inquired. "It doesn't often happen that he wants anything. And why. did he bring you with him?"

"I don't understand that either. In fact, I may say that I decidedly object to his bringing witnesses in such a matter. It is not my fault. Good-bye."

The more embarrassed his manner became the more insistent was she.

"I must decline," he confessed finally, "to burn my fingers in the affairs of a third person, especially when the third party skedaddles and evades his most earnest obligations."

With eyes wide open Guste seemed to watch each word singly as it fell from Diederich's lips. When the last was uttered she remained motionless for a moment, and then buried her face in her hands. She was sobbing and he could see her swollen cheeks and the tears trickling between her fingers. She had no handkerchief, and Diederich affected by her sorrow, lent her his. "After all," said he, "he is not such a great loss." But then Guste arose in her wrath. "You dare say that! It was you who was attacking him. That he should send just you here seems to be more than strange."

"Kindly explain what you mean," demanded Diederich. "You must have known just as well as I, my dear young lady, what to expect from the gentleman in question. Where a man's opinions are feeble, everything else in him is equally so."

As she looked him up and down mockingly, he continued, all the more severely: "I told you beforehand exactly what would happen."

"Because you wanted it to happen," she replied venomously. And Diederich ironically: "He himself appointed me to keep his pot stirred. And if the pot had not been wrapped in a cloth, he would long since have let it boil over."