"But"--she almost smiled--"I'm afraid we'll have to put up with it. Look!" She spread wide her rumpled skirt. Her eyes rolled down to indicate her torn bodice. With her fingertips she touched the bruises on her face and the marks on her neck. "And I haven't even a hat on," she concluded with an undoubted smile. 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.