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Page 35
There are feminine eyes which allure as much while they seem to repel as
they do when they consciously attract; and the light-blue ones which
shone in the white face of this East End enchantress were of the number.
Max opened the door and slowly stepped into the outhouse. At the moment
of glancing back--an inevitable thing--he saw that she looked sorry,
dismayed. He took his gloves out of his pocket and began to draw them
on, to fill up the time. By the time the second finger of the first
glove was in its place, for he was deliberate, the girl had come into
the outhouse, passed him, and was drawing water from the tap into her
kettle. He watched her. She knew it, but pretended not to notice. The
circumstance of the water flowing freely in the house which was supposed
to be deserted made an excuse for another remark, and a safe one.
"I thought they cut the water off from empty houses; that is, houses
supposed to be empty."
She turned round with so much alacrity as to suggest that she was glad
of the pretext for reopening communications. And this time there was a
bright look of arch amusement on her face instead of her former
expression of outraged dignity.
"So they do. But--the people who know how to live without paying rent
know a few other things, too."
Max laughed a little, but he was rather shocked. This pretty and in some
respects fastidiously correct young person ought not surely to find
amusement in defrauding even a water company.
The fact reminded him of that which the intoxication caused by a pretty
face had made him forget--that he was in a house of dubious character,
from which he would be wise in escaping without further delay. But then,
again, it was the very oddness of the contrast between the character of
the house and the behavior of the girl which made the piquancy of the
situation.
"Oh, yes; of course; I'd forgotten that," assented Max, limply.
And then he fell into silence, and the girl stood quietly by the tap,
which ran slowly, till the kettle was full.
And then it began to run over.
Now this incident was a provocation. Max was artful enough to know that
no girl who ever fills a kettle lets it run over unless she is much
preoccupied. He chose to think she was preoccupied with him. So he
laughed, and she looked quickly round and blushed, and turned her back
upon him with ferocity.
He came boldly up to her.
"I'm so sorry," said he, in a coaxing, confidential, persuasive tone,
such as she had given him no proper encouragement to use, "that we've
had a sort of quarrel just at the last, and spoiled the impression of
you I wanted to carry away."
He was evidently in no hurry to carry anything away, though he went on
with the glove-buttoning with much energy.
She listened, with her eyes down, making, kettle and all, the prettiest
picture possible. There was no light in the outhouse except that which
came from a little four-penny brass hand-lamp, which the girl must have
lit just before her last entrance into the inner room. It was behind
her, on a shelf against the wall; and the light shone through the loose
threads of her fair hair, making an aureole round the side view of her
little head.
She was bewitching like that, so the susceptible Max thought, while he
debated with himself whether he now dared to try again for that small
reward. And he reluctantly decided that he did not dare. And again there
was something piquant in the fact of his not daring.
The girl, after a short pause, looked up; perhaps, though not so
susceptible as he, she was not insensible to the fact that Max was young
and handsome, well dressed, a little in love with her, and altogether
different from the types of male humanity most common to Limehouse.
"If," she suggested at last, with some hesitation, "you really think it
better to see my grandmother, she will be down very soon. I'm going to
make some tea; and you could wait, if you liked, in the next room."
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