The fact reminded him of that which the intoxication caused by a pretty face had made him forget—­that he was in a house of dubious character, from which he would be wise in escaping without further delay.  But then, again, it was the very oddness of the contrast between the character of the house and the behavior of the girl which made the piquancy of the situation.

“Oh, yes; of course; I’d forgotten that,” assented Max, limply.

And then he fell into silence, and the girl stood quietly by the tap, which ran slowly, till the kettle was full.

And then it began to run over.

Now this incident was a provocation.  Max was artful enough to know that no girl who ever fills a kettle lets it run over unless she is much preoccupied.  He chose to think she was preoccupied with him.  So he laughed, and she looked quickly round and blushed, and turned her back upon him with ferocity.

He came boldly up to her.

“I’m so sorry,” said he, in a coaxing, confidential, persuasive tone, such as she had given him no proper encouragement to use, “that we’ve had a sort of quarrel just at the last, and spoiled the impression of you I wanted to carry away.”

He was evidently in no hurry to carry anything away, though he went on with the glove-buttoning with much energy.

She listened, with her eyes down, making, kettle and all, the prettiest picture possible.  There was no light in the outhouse except that which came from a little four-penny brass hand-lamp, which the girl must have lit just before her last entrance into the inner room.  It was behind her, on a shelf against the wall; and the light shone through the loose threads of her fair hair, making an aureole round the side view of her little head.

She was bewitching like that, so the susceptible Max thought, while he debated with himself whether he now dared to try again for that small reward.  And he reluctantly decided that he did not dare.  And again there was something piquant in the fact of his not daring.

The girl, after a short pause, looked up; perhaps, though not so susceptible as he, she was not insensible to the fact that Max was young and handsome, well dressed, a little in love with her, and altogether different from the types of male humanity most common to Limehouse.

“If,” she suggested at last, with some hesitation, “you really think it better to see my grandmother, she will be down very soon.  I’m going to make some tea; and you could wait, if you liked, in the next room.”

“I should be delighted,” said Max.

Off came the gloves; and as the girl tripped quickly into the adjoining room, he followed with alacrity.

“Mind,” cried she suddenly, as she turned from the fireplace and stood by the table in an attitude of warning, “it is at your own risk, you know, that you stay.  You can guess that the people who belong to a hole-and-corner place like this are not the sort you’re accustomed to meet at West-End dinner tables, nor yet at an archbishop’s garden-party.  But as you’ve stayed so long, it will be better for me if you stay till you have seen Granny, as she must have heard me talking to you by this time.”