She took the envelope, but was unable to open it.  The arc lights flared and winked above her in the high roof of the wharf; the crowds of keen-faced, hard-eyed men and women in costly, neat-fitting clothing were as oblivious of her and as ferociously intent on their own affairs as the shabby, noisy crowd she had left in Naples, brushing by her as though she were a part of the wharf as they bent over their trunks anxiously, and locked them up with determination.  It seemed to Sylvia that she could never break the spell of fear which bound her fast.  Minute after minute dragged by, and she still stood, very white, very sick.

She was aware that some one stood 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?”