And then, before he could add more, he was shocked by the avidity with which she almost snatched them from his hand. "I--I'd forgotten!" stammered he. It was an awful sight. The girl was hungry, ravenously hungry, and he had been chatting to her and talking about kisses when she was starving! There was again a faint spot of color in her cheeks, as she turned her back to him and crouched on the hearth with the food. "Don't look at me," she said, half laughing, half ashamed. "I suppose you've never been without food for two days!" Max could not at first answer. He sat in one of the wooden chairs, with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped, calling himself, mentally, all sorts of things for his idiotic forgetfulness. "And to think," said he, at last, in a hoarse and not over-steady-voice, "that I dared to compare myself to a knight-errant!" The biscuits were disappearing rapidly. Presently she turned and let him see her face again. "Perhaps," suggested she, still with her mouth full, "as you say, one didn't hear quite all about those gentlemen. Perhaps they forgot things sometimes. And perhaps," she added, with a most gracious change to gratitude and kindness, "they weren't half so sorry when they forgot as you are." Max listened in fresh amazement. Where on earth had this child of the slums, in the cheap-stuff frock and clumsy shoes, got her education, her refinement? Her talk was not so very different from that of the West-End dinner-tables she had laughed at. What did it mean? "Do you really feel so grateful for the little I have done?" he asked suddenly. The girl drew a long breath. "I don't dare to tell you _how_ grateful." "Well, then, will you tell me all about yourself? I'm getting more puzzled every moment. I hope it isn't rude to say so, but--you and this place don't _fit_." For a moment the girl did not answer. Then she put the paper which had held the biscuits carefully into the cupboard by the fireplace, and as she did so he saw her raise her shoulders with an involuntary and expressive shrug. "I suppose it is rather surprising," she said at last, as she folded her hands in her lap and kept her eyes fixed upon the red heart of the fire. "It surprises me sometimes." There was a pause, but Max would not interrupt her, for he thought from her manner that an explanation of some sort was coming. At last she went on, raising her head a little, but without looking at him: "And very likely it will astonish you still more to hear that in coming to this place I made a change for the better." Max was too much surprised to make any comment. "If you want to know my name, date of birth, parentage and the rest of it," went on the girl, in a tone of half-playful recklessness, "why, I have no details to give you. I don't know anything about myself, and nobody I know seems to know any more. Granny says she does, but I don't believe her." She paused. "Why, surely," began Max, "your own grandmother--"