“I think,” cried Max, as he strode quickly to the door by which he had come in, “that the best thing you can do is to sacrifice your things, whatever they are, and to get out of the place yourself as fast as you can.”

As he spoke he lifted the latch and tried to open the door.  But although the latch went up, the door remained shut.

Max pulled and shook it, and finally put his knee against the side-post and gave the handle of the latch a terrific tug.

It broke in his hand, but the door remained closed.

He turned round quickly, and saw the girl, with one hand on her hip and with the candle held in the other, leaning against the whitewashed wall, with a smile of amusement on her thin face.

What a face it was!  Expressive as no other face he had ever seen, and wearing now a look of what seemed to Max diabolical intelligence and malice.  She nodded at him mockingly.

“I can’t get out!” thundered he, threateningly, with another thump at the door.

The girl answered in the low voice she always used; by contrast with his menacing tones it seemed lower than ever: 

“I don’t mean you to—­yet.  I guessed you’d want to go pretty soon, so I locked the door.”

CHAPTER VIII.

FOREWARNED, BUT NOT FOREARMED.

“By Jove!” muttered Max.  Then, with a sudden outburst of energy, inspired by indignation at the trap in which he found himself, he dashed across the floor to the zinc pail he had previously noticed, and swinging it round his head, was about to make such an attack upon the door as its old timbers could scarcely have resisted, when the girl suddenly shot between him and the door, placing herself with her back to it and her arms spread out, so quickly that he only missed by a hair’s breadth dealing her such a blow as would undoubtedly have split her skull.

In the effort to avoid this, Max, checking himself, staggered and slipped, falling on the brick floor, pail and all.

“Oh, I am sorry!  So sorry!”

Again the oddly expressive face had changed completely.  Her scarlet lips—­those vividly red lips which go with an opaque white skin—­were instantly parted with genuine terror.  Her eyes looked soft and shining, full of tender feminine kindness and sympathy.  Down she went on her knees beside him, asking anxiously: 

“Are you hurt?  Oh, I know your wrist is hurt!”

Max gave her a glance, the result of which was that he began to feel more afraid of her than of the locked door.  About this strange, almost uncannily beautiful child of the riverside slum there was a fascination which appealed to him more and more.  The longer he looked at the wide, light-blue eyes, listened to the hoarse but moving voice, the more valiantly he had to struggle against the spell which he felt her to be casting upon him.

“I’ve strained my wrist a little, I think.  Nothing to matter,” said he.