The next afternoon Henrietta left her office early, in order to discharge some commissions for her sister in the shopping district. Stopping to look at a window display of spring costumes, her eye was caught by a dress that suited her taste exactly. She inspected it from both sides and went into the doorway that she might get the back view.
“What a lovely suit and how becoming it would be for me!” she thought. “I wonder if I could afford to buy it. Oh dear, no! I mustn’t even think of such a thing! It would be just that much off the mortgage payments.”
She turned away with a sigh and found herself face to face with Hugh Gordon, who glanced with a quizzical smile from her to the window.
“Did you hear one of the commandments cracking?” she laughed. “I’ve just been coveting one of those suits as hard as I could.”
“Are you going in to buy it now?” he asked with a suggestion of disappointment in his air, as if, having come upon her so unexpectedly, he disliked to lose her again at once.
“Oh, dear, no! I’m not going to buy it at all. I can’t afford it.”
“Well, then, you are wise not to buy it, and the best way is not even to think about it any more,” he said in that abrupt manner to which, although it had sometimes startled her at their first meetings, she had already grown accustomed. She had told herself more than once, indeed, that she liked it in him, it seemed so expressive of his masculine forcefulness and decision of character.
“How different you are from Mr. Brand,” she answered smiling. “He would say in such case, ‘If you want it why don’t you buy it at once? There’s no time like the present for doing the things you want to do.’”
His brows came together in a quick frown and his eyes flashed as he said: “Yes, I know that is his philosophy of life. But it’s not mine by a long ways. I think it despicable.”
His voice sounded harsh and angry and Henrietta looked up in surprise at the intensity of feeling it betrayed.