He heard the loose plaster rattle down; but when he looked for the result of his blow, he saw nothing but the old-fashioned, dirty paper on the wall, apparently without a hole or tear in it.

The discovery made him feel sick.

He turned to make his escape from the house, to which he felt that he was a fool to have returned at all, when the door by which he had entered opened slowly, and the girl came in.

A little flash, as of pleased surprise, passed over her white face.  Then she said, under her breath: 

“So you have come back.  I didn’t think you would.  I—­I am sorry you did.”

Max looked rather blank.  The girl’s attraction for him had increased during the short period he had been absent from her.  He had had time to think over his feelings, to find his interest stimulated by the process.  Imagination, which does so much for a woman with a man, and for a man with a woman, had begun to have play.  He had come back determined to find out more about the girl, to probe to the bottom of the mystery in which, perhaps, consisted so much of the charm she had for him.

Even now, upon her entrance, the first sight of her face had made his heart leap up.

There was a pause when she finished speaking.  Max, who was usually fluent enough with her sex, hesitated, stammered and at last said: 

“You are sorry I came back?  Yet you seemed anxious enough to make me promise to come back!”

He observed that a great change had come over her.  Instead of being nerveless and lifeless, as he had left her, with dull eyes and weak, helpless limbs, she was now agitated, excited; she glanced nervously about her while he spoke, and tapped the finger-tips of one hand restlessly with those of the other as she listened.

“I know,” she replied, rapidly, “I know I was.  But—­Granny has come back.  She came in while you were gone.”

Max glanced at the wall, where he had fancied he saw the pair of watching eyes.

“Oh,” said he, “that explains what I saw, perhaps.  Where is your grandmother?”

“She has gone upstairs to her room under the roof.”

“Ah!  Are you sure she is upstairs?  That she is not in the next room, for instance, watching me through some secret peep-hole of hers?”

The girl stared at him in silence as he pointed to the wall, and as he ran his hand over its surface.

“I saw a pair of eyes watching me just now,” he went on, “from the middle of this wall.  I could swear to it!”

The girl looked incredulous, and passed her hand over the wall in her turn.  Then she shook her head.

“I can feel nothing,” said she.  “It must be your fancy.  There is no room there.  It is the ground-floor of an old warehouse next door which has been to let for years and years—­longer than this.”

He still looked doubtful, and she added, sharply: 

“You can see for yourself if you like.”