"I've strained my wrist a little, I think. Nothing to matter," said he.
But as he moved he found that the wrist gave him pain. He got up from the floor, and stood with his left hand clasping the injured right wrist, not so eager as before to make his escape.
"Why don't you let me out?" he asked at last, sharply, with an effort.
The girl looked at him with yet a new expression on her mobile face—an expression of desperation.
"Because I couldn't bear it any longer," she whispered. And as she spoke her eyes wandered round the bare walls and rested for a moment on the inner door. "Because when you've been all alone in the cold, without any food, without any one to speak to for two days and two nights, you feel you must speak to some one, whatever comes of it. If I'd had to wait out there, listening, listening, for another night, I should have been mad, raving mad in the morning."
"But I don't understand it at all," said Max, again inclining to belief in the girl's story, impressed by her passionate earnestness. "Where has your grandmother gone to? Why didn't she take you with her? Can't you tell me the whole story?"
The girl looked at him curiously.
"Just now you only thought of getting away."
"I don't care to be detained by lock and key, certainly," said Max. "But if you will unlock the door, I am quite ready to wait here until you have unburdened your mind, if you want to do that."
She looked at him doubtfully.