He limped forward to meet her and take from her hand the letter she held toward him. For the first moment he looked at her, not at the letter, which dwindled to a thing of no importance when their eyes met over it. Her face was nipped by the keen outside air into a bright, beaming rosiness. She wore on her head a man’s fur cap which was pulled well down, and pressed wisps of fair hair against her forehead and cheeks. A loose fur-lined coat enveloped her to her feet, and after she had handed him his letter she pulled off the mittens she wore and began unfastening the clasps of the coat, with fingers that were purplish and cramped from the cold.
“There’s only one for you,” she said. “I waited till the postmaster looked all through them twice. Then I made him give it to me and ran back here with it. The entire population of Antelope’s in the post-office and there’s the greatest excitement.”
Her coat was unfastened and she threw back its long fronts, her figure outlined against the gray fur lining. She snatched off her cap and tossed it to an adjacent chair and with a quick hand brushed away the hair it had pressed down on her forehead.
“I got seven,” she said, turning to the fire, “and papa a whole bunch, and the judge, quantities, and Willoughby, three. But only one for you—poor, neglected man!”
Spreading her hands wide to the blaze she looked at him over her shoulder, laughing teasingly. He had the letter in his hands still unopened.
“Why,” she cried, “what an extraordinary sight! You haven’t opened it!”
“No,” he answered, turning it over, “I haven’t.”
“I’ve always heard that curiosity was a feminine weakness but I never knew it till now,” she said. “Please go on and read it, because if you don’t I’ll feel that I’m preventing you and I’ll have to go up stairs to my own room, which is as cold as a refrigerator. Don’t make me polite and considerate against my will.”
Without answering her he tore open the letter and, moving to the light of the window, held the sheet up and began to read.
There was silence for some minutes. The fire sputtered and snapped, and once or twice the crisp paper rustled in Dominick’s hands. Rose held her fingers out to the warmth, studying them with her head on one side as if she had never seen them before. Presently she slid noiselessly out of her coat, and dropped it, a heap of silky fur, on a chair beside her. The movement made it convenient to steal a glance at the young man. He was reading the letter, his body close against the window-pane, his face full of frowning, almost fierce concentration. She turned back to the fire and made small, surreptitious smoothings and jerks of arrangement at her collar, her belt, her skirt. Dominick turned the paper and there was something aggressive in the crackling of the thin, dry sheet.