Who can he be ?" she thought, and then swiftly, as in a blaze of light, she remembered the May afternoon in West Twenty-third Street, and "Alice," whom she had wondered about and forgotten.

She had again a vivid impression of bigness, of freshness, and of gray eyes that, reminded her vaguely of the colour of a storm on the sea.
"Good evening!" he remarked with impersonal friendliness as he passed her; and from the quality of his voice she inferred, as she had done on that May afternoon, that he was without culture, probably without education.
He went inside; the door of his front room opened and shut, and after a minute or two the snatch of ragtime floated merrily through his window.
If there was anything on earth she disliked, she reflected impatiently, it was a comic song.
"He isn't a gentleman.

I was right, he is common," she thought disdainfully, as she went indoors and ascended the stairs.

"And he may make it very disagreeable for us if he insists on bringing common people into the houses" There was a vague impression in her mind that the males of the lower classes were invariably noisy.
"I saw the man on the first floor as I came up," she remarked to Miss Folly.

"I hope he isn't going to be an annoyance." "Mrs.Squires says he's never in evenings.