“I know—It’s absurdly cheap—and very beautiful! But I simply cannot afford it! Thank you for showing it to me—so late!” She moved, a little blindly, toward the stairs. The elevator had ceased to run.
When she was gone the woman stood with the coat in her hand irresolute. A helper coming by with an armful of gray covers cast a flitting glance at it.
“Want a top?”
But she shook her head. “I will put it in the box for to-night.”
The helper went on down the aisle. The woman drew a box from beneath the counter and folded the dragons with careful hand, and smoothed their tails and placed the coat in its box. Through a bit of tissue-paper across the top of the blue and gold it gleamed and shimmered softly, and the woman brushed light finger-tips across it as she pressed the paper down and tucked it in and set the box aside.
Then she went down the room, and disappeared among the shadows of counters and cases, and the shop was left alone. Darkness slipped in from outside, and pushed the grayness before it. It clothed the dummy figure in black, and descended on the box of dragons, blotting it out. It covered the whole room.
In the darkness beneath the counter lay the Chinese coat, with its bit of tissue-paper lying across the glory of blue and gold, safely tucked away.
Only the vast oblongs of windows remained to show faintly, against the street outside, where the light came in.