She stood with her hands hanging idle and her eyes looking down. She was like a prehistoric creature—an Oriental Madonna of ageless form and beauty.... Almost, he fancied, there were tears in the lidded eyes.... He started and turned brusquely.
The clerk was coming back. He looked at her keenly as she came toward them.
She shook her head. “Ninety-five dollars,” she said. “But you can have a charge, of course.”
His hand moved to his pocket and his eyes were on his wife’s face.
She turned, with a shiver of the long silken lines, and she threw back the coat with a laugh.
“How absurd, Richard I—We can’t pay all that money—for a whim!”
His hand stayed itself from the pocket. “Don’t you want it?” he asked doubt-ingly.
“Of course not!” She shook the coat from her and stepped out.
The woman caught it with a quick gesture as it fell.
His hand waited, fingering the coins in his pocket. “I think we could manage it——”