Her eyes on the big square cardboard box he carried in his hand, she received him somberly. Having allowed him to kiss her, she sat down at the end of a table drawn up beside the window, while he put the box in front of her.
"What's this?"
He placed himself at the other end of the table, having its length between them. Because of his waning love, because of the ring above all, he had done one of those reckless things which sometimes render men exultant. From his slender means he had filched a hundred dollars for a set of furs. He watched Maisie's face as she untied knots and lifted the cover of the band-box.
On discovering the contents her expression became critical. She fingered the fur without taking either of the articles from the box. Turning over an edge of the boa, she looked at the lining. It was a minute or two before she took out the muff and held it in her hands. She examined it as if she were buying it in a shop.
"That's a last year's style," was her first observation. "It'll be regular old-fashioned by next winter, and, of course, I shouldn't want a muff before then. The girls'll think I got them second-hand when they're as out of date as all that. They're awful particular in Nashua, more like New York than Boston." She shook out the boa. "Those little tails are sweet, but they don't wear them now. How much did you give?"
He told her.
"They're not worth it. It's the marked-down season too. Some one's put it over on you. I could have got them for half the price—and younger. These are an old woman's furs. The girls'll say my aunt in Boston's died, and left them to me in her will."
Brushing them aside, she faced him with her resentful eyes. Her hands were clasped in front of her, the diamond flashing on the finger resting on a table-scarf of thin brown silk embroidered in magenta ferns.
"Well, Tom, what's your answer to my letter?"
At any other minute he would have replied gently, placatingly; but just now his heart was hot. A hundred dollars had meant much to him. It would have to be paid back in paring down on all his necessities, in food, in carfares, even in the washing of his clothes. He too clasped his hands on the table, facing her as she faced him. He remembered afterward how blue her eyes had been, blue as lapis lazuli. All he could see in them now was demand, and further demand, and demand again after that.