Max, not finally rebuffed, but rather puzzled what to make of this form of repulse, was silent for a few moments.

“Well, if you won’t let me talk about that,” he said at last, “will you promise to let me know where you are going to, so that I shan’t have to lose sight of you?  Come, you like me well enough to agree to that, don’t you?”

Carrie hesitated.

“I told you,” she said at last, in a low voice, “that I didn’t know myself where I was going.  Have you forgotten that?”

“But it wasn’t true.  You said it to put me off.  You must know!”

“Well, I shan’t tell you.  There!”

“Why?”

“Because it would be the beginning of what I don’t want and won’t have.  Because you’d come and see me, and I shouldn’t have the heart to say you mustn’t come; and in the end, if you persisted, I shouldn’t have the heart to stop you from making a fool of yourself.”

“How, making a fool of myself?”

“Why, by marrying me.  Now don’t pretend you don’t know it’s true.  Marrying me would be just ruin—­ruin!  Oh, I know!  What would your family say, and be right in saying?  That you’d been got hold of by a girl nobody knew anything about, without any parents or friends, and who came from nobody knew where.”

“Ah, but when they knew you—­”

“They’d think less of me than they did before.”

“Nonsense!  When they saw how beautiful you are and well educated and refined, they wouldn’t believe you came from such a place as Limehouse.”

Carrie smiled.

“I seem refined to you, because you didn’t expect much where you found me.  Put me beside your sisters and their friends, and I should be shy and awkward enough.  No, I will not listen, and I want you to tell the driver to stop here.”

Whether this was the point she had proposed to reach or whether she wanted to cut short the subject, Max could not tell.  But as the hansom stopped she sprang out and led the way hurriedly in the direction of the river.  She knew her way about on this side of the river as well as on the other, for she went straight to the water’s edge, got into a boat which was moored there with a dozen others, and, with a nod to a man with a pipe in his mouth who was loafing near the spot, she directed Max to jump in, and seized one oar while he took the other.

“If we go from this side,” she said, “we can make sure we’re not followed, at all events.”

In the darkness they began to row across the river, where the traffic had practically ceased for the night.

Threading their way between the barges, the great steam traders, with their ugly square hulks standing high out of the water, and the lesser craft that clustered about the larger like a swarm of bees round the hive, they came out upon the gray stream, slowly leaving behind one dim shore, with its gloomy wharves and warehouses, and nearing the other.  The London lights looked dim and blurred through the mist.