“You think the knight expected payment, just as you do, for his services?”

“I think so.  A very small payment, but one which he would appreciate highly.”

The girl leaned against the wall by the door and looked at him with something like contempt for a moment.  Then she smiled, not encouragingly, but with mockery in her eyes.

“You have a tariff, I suppose,” said she, cuttingly, “a regular scale of charges, as, perhaps, you will say the knights had.  Pray, what is your charge in the present instance?  A kiss, perhaps, or two?”

Now, Max had, indeed, indulged the hope that she would bestow upon him this small mark of gratitude.  It came upon him with a shock of surprise that a girl who had been so bold as to summon him should make so much fuss about the reward he had certainly earned.  He had expected to get it with a laugh and a blush, as a matter of course.  For his modest suggestion to be taken so seriously was a disconcerting occurrence.  He drew himself up a little.

“I don’t pretend I should have been generous enough to refuse such a payment if you had shown the slightest willingness to make it,” said he.  “But as it’s the sort of coin that has no value unless given voluntarily, we will consider the debt settled without it.”

He made a pretense of leaving her at this point, without the slightest intention of persisting in it.  This curious conference had all the zest of a most novel kind of flirtation, which was none the less piquant for the girl’s haughty airs.

There are feminine eyes which allure as much while they seem to repel as they do when they consciously attract; and the light-blue ones which shone in the white face of this East End enchantress were of the number.

Max opened the door and slowly stepped into the outhouse.  At the moment of glancing back—­an inevitable thing—­he saw that she looked sorry, dismayed.  He took his gloves out of his pocket and began to draw them on, to fill up the time.  By the time the second finger of the first glove was in its place, for he was deliberate, the girl had come into the outhouse, passed him, and was drawing water from the tap into her kettle.  He watched her.  She knew it, but pretended not to notice.  The circumstance of the water flowing freely in the house which was supposed to be deserted made an excuse for another remark, and a safe one.

“I thought they cut the water off from empty houses; that is, houses supposed to be empty.”

She turned round with so much alacrity as to suggest that she was glad of the pretext for reopening communications.  And this time there was a bright look of arch amusement on her face instead of her former expression of outraged dignity.

“So they do.  But—­the people who know how to live without paying rent know a few other things, too.”

Max laughed a little, but he was rather shocked.  This pretty and in some respects fastidiously correct young person ought not surely to find amusement in defrauding even a water company.