Somehow as he gazed, his earliest conscious emotion was that of sympathy—­it all appeared so unspeakably pathetic, so homesick, so dismally forlorn and barren.  Then that half-upturned face riveted his attention and seemed to awaken a vague, dreamy memory he found himself unable to localize; it reminded him of some other face he had known, tantalizing from its dim indistinctness.  Then this earlier impression slightly faded away, and he merely beheld her alone, a perfect stranger appropriating little by little her few claims to womanly beauty.  There was no certain guessing at her age as she lay thus, one hand pressed beneath her cheek, her eyes closed, the long, dark lashes clearly outlined against the white flesh, her bosom rising and falling with the steady breathing of absolute exhaustion.  She appeared so extremely tired, discouraged, unhappy, that the young man involuntarily closed his teeth tightly, as though some wrong had been personally done to himself.  He marked the dense blackness of her heavy mass of hair; the perfect clearness of her skin; the shapeliness of the slender, outstretched figure; the narrow boot, with its high-arched instep, peeping shyly beneath the blue skirt; the something rarely interesting, yet which scarcely made for beauty, revealed unconsciously in the upturned face with its rounded chin and parted lips.

There was no distinct regularity of features, but there was unquestionably character, such character as we recognize vaguely in a sculptured face, lacking that life-like expression which the opened eyes alone are capable of rendering.  All this swept across his mind in that instant during which he remained irresolute from surprise.  Yet Winston was by nature a gentleman; almost before he had grasped the full significance of it all he stepped silently backward, and gently closed the door.  For an uncertain moment he remained there staring blankly at the wood, that haunting memory once again mocking every vain attempt to associate this girl-face with some other he had known before.  Finally, leaving valise and overcoat lying in the hall, he retraced his way slowly down the stairs.

“Tom,” and the young man leaned against the rough counter, his voice grown graver, “there chances to be a woman at present occupying that room you just assigned me.”

“No!  Is that so?” and the clerk swung easily down from his high stool, drawing the register toward him.  “Must be one of the troupe, then.  Let’s see—­Number Twenty-seven, was n’t it?  Twenty-seven—­oh, yes, here it is.  That’s a fact,” and his finger slowly traced the line as he spelled out the name, “‘Miss Beth Norvell.’  Oh, I remember her now—­black hair, and a long gray coat; best looker among ’em.  Manager said she ’d have to be given a room all to herself; but I clean forgot I assigned her to Twenty-seven.  Make much of a row?”