Jan gave in.  He paid the cabman, and led her through the ladies’ entrance to where the bell-boy was waiting.  The boy led the way upstairs, opened a door and turned on the light.

“You wait out in the hall,” Jan said to the bell-boy.  “The lady may want hot water and things to clean up.  You know?  The lady”—­Jan tapped the boy on the shoulder—­“fell out of a buggy and lost her hat.”  He handed the boy a dollar bill.  “You understand now?”

The boy tucked the bill away.  “I’m wise!  I’m wise!” He winked at Jan and left the room.

Jan turned to her.  “I’ll have a few things sent up in the morning.”

She was standing straight and motionless in the middle of the room.

“You’re good,” she said, but without looking at him.

“And—­oh, my mother!  I most forgot her.  She lives in Port Rock.  To-morrow night I’ll put you aboard the boat for Port Rock.  And I won’t be able to see you till then.”

“Not till to-morrow night?”

“I has to be at the dry dock early in the morning or they can’t start work.  Good-night.”  He was holding his hat very stiffly in one hand.  The other hand he extended to her.

“Good-night,” the woman said, and took his hand and clung to it.  Suddenly she lifted it to her lips and sobbed.

A woman crying and kissing his hand, and all done so suddenly he couldn’t stop it—­Jan was shocked at himself.  “Sh-h!” said Jan.  “Sh-h!  You mustn’t.”

“I will.  You’re the first man ever came to the house who didn’t look at me as if I was a streetwalker.  And he tried his best to make me one.  And I fought him—­and fought him; but not a soul to help me.  And a woman can’t hold out forever.  I’d ‘a’ killed myself, but I was afraid to die that way.  I was beginning to weaken when you came.  And if you had been the wrong kind of a man—­”

“Sh-h!  Don’t say things like that.”

“But it’s so.  And you helped me to get over it.  Before I was married I used to dream of a man like you.  But what chance had I in the dance-halls along the water-front and my people dead?  And he was a dance-hall hero, the kind girls used to write notes to.  I was never as bad as that—­believe me I wasn’t,—­but I married him just the same—­at seventeen, and what does a girl know of life at seventeen?  And him!  Almost on my wedding-day he began to abuse me.”

“No, no!”

“It’s true.  And when you told me you’d take me to your mother—­that was the first message I’d got in five years from a man except what was meant for my harm.  But a good mother—­I’ll tell her so she’ll understand.”

“She’ll understand without you telling her.  She’s brought up a dozen of us and has grand-children—­lots of ’em.  Sunday morning you’ll be in my mother’s house in Port Rock.”

She stooped to kiss his hand again.

“Here!  Here—­you mustn’t!”

“I will—­I will!  And there!  And there!  And now good-night.”