the while that his indolent good nature (it
appeared to him little else) forbade him to cast back at her what
seemed a curious ingratitude almost passing the proverbial feminine
perversity, and let her go her own way as she would have it. On two
occasions, since that chance meeting in the Park, he had called
at the lodging in which he had helped her to install herself; and
from the last he had come away with a distinct sense of failure.
Something had come between them, an alien influence was in the
air, and the mystery which surrounded the girl, he saw with
disappointment, she would not of her own accord assist to dissipate.
And yet there was nothing offensive in her attitude, only it had
changed, lacked frankness.

One afternoon, finding that he could leave the dock early, he made
another effort. He stopped before one in a dingy row of small
houses, uniformly depressing, in a street that ran into the
Commercial Road, and rang the bell, which tinkled aggressively. A
slatternly woman, with a bandage round her head and an air of
drunken servility, responded to his inquiry for "Mrs. Crichton" by
ushering him into a small back parlour, in which a pale girl in
black sat with her head bent over a typewriter. She rose, as he came
in, a little nervously, and stood, her thin hands clasped in front
of her, looking up at him with expectant, terrified eyes.

"I am sorry to alarm you," he said stiffly. "I came to see if I
could do anything for you, and to tell you once more that I can do
nothing for you unless you are open with me, unless you help me."

The woman looked away to where the child sat, in a corner of the
small room, playing with some disused cotton reels.

"You are very kind, sir," she said in a low, uneasy voice; "but I
want nothing, we want very little, the child and I; and with what
your kindness in getting me the machine helps us to, we have
enough."

"You don't want to be reinstated, to get back your lover, to have
your child acknowledged?"

The girl flushed; her hands, which were still locked together,
trembled a little.

"I don't want for nothing, sir, except to be left alone."

Then she added, looking him straight in the face now, with a certain
rude dignity:

"I wouldn't seem ungrateful, sir, for your great kindness. I think
you are the best man I ever met. Oh, believe me, I am not
ungrateful, sir! But it is no good, not a scrap, though once I
thought it. We must get along as we can now, the child