“I’d never took her for the same woman—­never!” thought Jan.

Next evening Jan saw her again, this time in the narrow second-floor hallway near the stairs.  She shrank against the stair-rail to let him pass.  Jan drew up against the wall.  She mutely indicated that he should pass.

“After you, ma’am,” said Jan, and resolutely waited.

“Thank you,” she said, and passed on.  At the head of the flight of stairs she turned her head.  Jan was still there.

“Is your room all right?” She asked the question hurriedly, awkwardly.

“All right, ma’am.”

“And not too noisy for you here?—­the basement noise, I mean.”

“A ship-carpenter, ma’am—­he soon gets used to noise.”

“Of course.”  She glanced furtively at him.  “Good-night.”  She hurried downstairs.

That night when Jan, who read romantic fiction to relieve his loneliness, laid down his stirring mediaeval tale to go to bed, he did not follow up the intention with immediate action, as usual.

By and by he raised the window-sash, and the cool, damp sea-air feeling good, he leaned out to enjoy it.  It was a cloudy night, with a touch of coming snow in the air; but for all that a night to enjoy, only for the racket ascending from the pool-room.

“I don’t think much of those people down there,” thought Jan as he lowered the sash to all but six or eight inches for fresh air and picked up the alarm clock from the rickety dresser.  “I wonder if she’s one of that crowd?” And he began to wind the clock.  “But sure she ain’t—­sure not.”

Jan had been holding the clock absently in his hand.  Suddenly he set it down and scolded himself—­“Jan Tingloff, remember you has to be up at six in the morning!”—­and undressed, blew out the light and slid into bed, and tried to go to sleep.  And he did after a while; but his last thought before he fell into slumber was:  “Who’d ever think one day a woman could grow so young-looking the next day?”

Many an evening after that Jan met the landlady on the stairs or in the hall, and always she stopped to ask him how he was coming on with his ship; but never any more than that or a brief word as to the weather and his comfort, though there were times when Jan felt he would like to become better acquainted—­times when he even had a feeling that if he had asked her to sit down somewhere for a talk she would be willing.  Jan had learned, however, that she was married.  It had been a shock to learn that.  It had come about by his noticing after three or four days the plain gold ring on the wedding finger.  He had kept staring at it until she could not help remarking it; and by and by, in a casual sort of way, she had told him she was married.

“And is your husband living, ma’am?” asked Jan.

“He’s living—­yes,” she answered slowly.