Carrie shook her head with indifference. "I like him in my way," said she. "Not in his way. There's a great difference." "And do you like any man--in his way?" The girl replied with a significant gesture of disgust, which had in it nothing of coquetry, nothing of affectation. "No," said she, shortly. "Why do you answer like that?" "Why? Oh, well, if you knew all that I've seen, you wouldn't wonder, you wouldn't want to ask." "You won't always feel like that. You won't, when you have got away from this hole, and are living among decent people." "The 'decent people' are those who leave me alone," said Carrie, shortly, "as they do here." "As who do here? Who are the people who live in that shut-up house, besides you and your Granny, as you call her?" "I--mustn't tell you. They don't belong to any county families. Is that enough?" "Why are you so different now from what you were when we were sitting by the fire in there? You are not like the same girl! Are you the same girl?" And Max affected to feel, or, perhaps, really felt, a doubt which necessitated his coming a little closer to Carrie, without, however, being able to see much more of her face than before. "I'm the same girl," replied Carrie, shortly, "whom you threatened with the police." "Come, is that fair? Did I threaten _you_ with the police?" "You threatened _us_. It's the same thing. Well, it doesn't matter. They won't find out anything more than we choose!" She said this defiantly, ostentatiously throwing in her lot with the dubious characters from whom Max would fain have dissociated her. "Do you forget," he asked, suddenly, "that these precious friends of yours left you, forgot you, for two whole days--left you to the company of a dead man, to a chance stranger? Is that what you call kindness--friendship--affection?" She made no answer. A moment later a voice was heard calling softly: "Carrie?" The girl came out of the shelter of the eaves, and Max at last caught sight of her face. It was sad, pale, altogether different from what the reckless, defiant, rather hard tones of her latest words would have led him to expect. A haunting face, Max thought. "I must go," said she. "Good-bye." "Carrie!" repeated the voice, calling again, impatiently. Max knew, although he could not see the owner of the voice, that it was "Dick." It was, he thought, a coarse voice, full of intimations of the swaggering self-assertion of the low-class Londoner, who thinks himself the whole world's superior. Carrie called out: "All right; I'm coming!" And then she turned to Max. "You are to forget this place, and me," said she, in a whisper. The next moment Max found himself alone. CHAPTER XIII. THE SEQUEL TO A TRAGEDY.