“I want you to get a suit, you know—a good one—” He paused. “—And you need something warm—a fur-lined wrap or something—don’t you?”
She wrinkled the little line between her eyes. “It is—so late—the winter is half gone already.” Then her face cleared. “I think I’ll—wait till spring,” she said.
He could almost fancy something danced at him, mocked him behind the still face.
He turned away, the deep, hurt feeling coming close. “Get what you like,” he said. “I want you to have enough.”
The money lay in her hand, and her fingers opened on it and closed on it. Then she breathed softly, like a sigh, and went to her desk and put it away.
VI
THROUGH the weeks that followed Eldridge watched the things money could buy quietly taking their place in the house. Little comforts that he had not missed—had not known any one could miss—were at hand. The children looked somehow subtly different. He had a sense of expansion, softly breaking threads of habit, expectancy. Only Rosalind seemed unchanged. Yet each time he looked at her he fancied that she had changed—more than all of them. He could not keep his eyes from her. Something was hidden in her—Something he did not know—that he would never know. Perhaps he should die and not know it.... Did the dead know things—everything? He seemed to remember hazily from Sunday-school—something—If he were dead, he might come close to her—as close as the little thoughts behind her eyes——
The cold grew keener, and Eldridge, shivering home from the office, remembered a pair of fur gloves in the attic. He had not worn them for years. But after supper he took a light and went to look for them.