tood in front of her, looking into her
face, and she recognized one of the ship's officials whom she had
noticed from a distance on the ship, an under-officer, somehow
connected with the engines, who had sat at table with the second-class
passengers. He was a burly, red-faced man, with huge strong hands and
a bald head.

He looked at her now for a moment with an intent kindness, and taking
her arm led her a step to a packing-case on which he made her sit
down. At the break in her immobility, a faintness came over Sylvia.
The man bent over her and began to fan her with his cap. A strong
smell of stale and cheap tobacco reached Sylvia from all of his
obese person, but his vulgar, ugly face expressed a profoundly
self-forgetful concern. "There, feelin' better?" he asked, his eyes
anxiously on hers. The man looked at the envelope comprehendingly:
"Oh--bad news--" he murmured. Sylvia opened her hand and showed him
that it had not been opened. "I haven't looked at it yet," she said
pitifully.

The man made an inarticulate murmur of pity--put out his thick red
fingers, took the message gently from her hand, and opened it. As he
read she searched his face with an impassioned scrutiny.

When he raised his eyes from the paper, she saw in them, in that
grossly fleshy countenance, such infinite pity that even her swift
intuition of its meaning was not so swift as to reach her heart first.
The blow did not reach her naked and unprotected in the solitude of
her egotism, as it had at Naples. Confusedly, half-resentfully, but
irresistibly she knew that she did not--could not--stand alone, was
not the first thus to be struck down. This knowledge brought the tonic
summons to courage. She held out her hand unflinchingly, and stood
up as she read the message, "Mother died this morning at dawn." The
telegram was dated three days before. She was now two days from home.

She looked up at the man before her and twice tried to speak before
she could command her voice. Then she said quite steadily: "I live in
the West. Can you tell me anything about trains to Chicago?"

"I'm going with ye, to th' train," he said, taking her arm and moving
forward. Two hours later his vulgar, ugly, compassionate face was the
last she saw as the train moved out of the station. He did not seem a
stranger to Sylvia. She saw that he was more than middle-aged, he must
have lost _his_ mother, there must have been many deaths in his past.
He seemed more familiar t