It was cold there, in the attic, and he shivered a little, looking about the dusty place. There were boxes stacked along under the eaves and garments hanging grotesquely from the beams. He knew where Rosalind kept the gloves; he had seen them one day last summer when he was looking for window netting. It had not seemed to him then, in the hot attic, that any one could ever need gloves. He set down the lamp on a box and drew out a trunk and looked in it; they were not there. She must have changed the place of things—he would have to go down and ask her.
Then his eye sought out a box pushed far back under the eaves—he did not remember that he had ever seen that box; he glanced at it—and half turned away to pick up the lamp—and turned back. He could not have told why he felt that he must open it. He had set the light on a box a little above him, and it glimmered down on the box that he drew out and opened—and on a smooth piece of tissue-paper under the cover——A faint perfume came from beneath the paper, and he lifted it. There was a pair of long grey gloves—with the shape of a woman’s hand still softly held in the finger-tips.... He lifted them and stared and moistened his lips and ran his hand down inside the box to the bottom—soft, filmy stuff that yielded and sprang back.... He kneeled before it, half on his heels, peering down. He bent forward and lifted the things out—white things with threaded ribbon and lace—things such as Eldridge Walcott had never seen—delicate, web-like things—then a fur-lined coat and a grey dress and, at the bottom, a little linked something. He lifted it and peered at it and at the coins shining through the meshes and dropped it back.
He stood up and looked about him vaguely... after a minute he shivered a little. It was very cold in the attic. He knelt down and tried to put the things back; but his fingers shook, and the things took queer shapes and fell apart, and a soft perfume came from them that confused him. He tried to steady himself—he began at the bottom, putting each thing carefully in place... smoothing it down.
The door below creaked. A voice listened.... “You up there, Eldridge?”
He straightened himself... out of a thousand thoughts and questions. “Where are my fur gloves?” he said quietly. He took the light from its box and came over to the stairs.
Her face, lifted to him, was in the light and he could see the rays of light falling on it—and on the stillness, like a pool....
“They’re in the black trunk,” said Rosalind. Her foot moved to the stair—“I’ll get them for you.”
“No—Don’t come up,” he said. “It’s cold here. I know—I was just looking there.”
So she went back, closing the door behind her to keep out the cold.
When Eldridge came down he did not look at her. He blew out the light and put the gloves with his hat in the hall and came over with his paper and sat down.