It was indeed a fairy-tale banquet, this dinner of steak and chip potatoes, followed by meringues a la creme, and finishing up with bread and butter and cheese and celery.

There was enough for two, the only drawback being a deficiency of plates, which Max put right, in homely fashion, by eating his share from the dish.  Such a tragedy it was to him to find a beautiful girl who was hungry, actually hungry from want of food, that the appetite he had talked so much about failed him, and he found it difficult to eat his share and to keep up the light tone of talk which he judged to be necessary to the situation.

He wanted to ask her a hundred questions about the people at the wharf and the awful thing which had happened there; but none of these subjects seemed appropriate to the dinner-table, and Max decided to leave them to another and a better opportunity.

In the meanwhile he was getting more forgetful of Dudley’s warning every moment.  Carrie seemed to guess his feelings, and to be grateful for them.  She said very little, but she listened and she laughed, and gave him such pretty, touching glances, such half-mournful, half-merry looks when she thought he was not looking, that by the time they came to the cheese he was in a state of infatuation, in which he forgot to notice what a very long ten minutes Dudley was giving them.

He thought, as he watched Carrie in the lamplight, that he had greatly underrated her attractions on the occasion of their first meeting.  She had been so deadly white, so pinched about the cheeks; while now there was a little trace of pink color under the skin; and her blue eyes were bright and sparkling with enjoyment.

And it struck him with a pang that she looked so lovely, so bewitching, because of the change from cold and hunger which, as he knew, and as she had acknowledged, were her usual portion.

“Shall we sit by the fire?” asked he suddenly.

And he jumped up from the table, and turned Dudley’s biggest and coziest arm-chair round toward the warmth and the glow.

Carrie hesitated.  She rose slowly from her chair, and took up from the side-table, on which Max had placed it, the shabby black cape.

“Oh, you needn’t be in such a hurry,” said Max.  “I dare say he’ll be a great deal more than the ten minutes he said he should take.”

It was her action which had recalled Dudley to his mind.  And, for the first time, as he uttered these words, a doubt sprang up as to his friend’s good faith.  What if Dudley meant to give them both the slip, and to go off to the wharf by himself, after all?

Carrie’s eyes met his; perhaps she guessed what was passing in his mind.

“Oh, yes, he is sure to be longer than that,” said she at once; and, putting her cape down again, she took the chair Max had placed for her, while he sat in the opposite one.

“It’s beautiful to be warm!” cried she, softly, as she held out her hands to the blaze which Max had made.