The woman straightened herself and looked at him. “That was last month—for the sale. It was marked down.”
“And now it’s marked up, is it?” he asked a little cynically.
She assented and touched the coat gently with her fingers, stroking it. “It is a coat Mr. Stewart bought himself,” she said—“in China. He found it when he was buying goods—and liked it. But we’ve had it in stock some time, and he told me to mark it down for the sale. After that, when no one bought it”—she seemed to look at Eleanor almost with reproachful eyes—“then he told me to put back the original price.... It’s more than worth it, of course.”
“Of course,” said Richard absently. He was wondering how much Eleanor really wanted the coat.
She had not spoken from the moment it was laid on her shoulders. She seemed to have withdrawn into it—to have become an inaccessible part of its mystery and charm.
“I had not expected—to pay more than fifty dollars,” said Richard More slowly. “I happen to have that amount with me——-”
The woman waited on the suggestion.... She looked at the two people before her.
“I’ll speak to Mr. Stewart—if he hasn’t gone. It’s not like regular stock. I don’t know whether he would sell it for less——”
She moved away from them down the store and they stood, with all the dummy figures standing around, and waited for her.
Richard More did not speak. He longed to ask his wife whether she wanted it as much as that—as much as ninety-five dollars. But he could not shape the words that would say it. He almost wondered whether she would understand—if he asked her.