“But that’s just where I’m going!” she answered, laughing. “To the shoemaker’s to get my shoes. They’re being mended.”
“But—” he began, and stopped.
“But haven’t you more than one pair?” he had been about to say.
He couldn’t endure to see her running about the streets like this, hatless, in bedroom slippers, a neglected, pitiful creature who had lost her womanly pride.
All the circumstances of her life puzzled and displeased him. There was something about it he couldn’t comprehend—that fat fellow with his cooking, the strained gallantry of Rosaleen’s bearing, the subtly unpleasant atmosphere which surrounded them. Even poverty couldn’t account for it, he thought.
They had reached the corner, and Rosaleen stopped.
“Mr. Landry!” she said. “Could you lend me ten dollars?”
He pulled out his bill fold, handed her a bill, politely waved aside her thanks, and fled, hurrying from the sight of her. He felt really sick, with pity, with amazement, with an unconquerable disgust.