"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.