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 [pg 241] 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."