He put down the paper and leaned toward her. He felt nearer to her, in a street car, than in his own home. “Don’t you worry about coal, Rosalind! We shall not freeze—nor starve.”
She stared a little. “Of course, we shall not freeze, Eldridge!”
“I mean there is plenty—to be comfortable with. You are not to worry and pinch.”
A quick look flooded out at him—a look of the Rosalind within. “You mean we can afford not to worry?”
He saw the prig Eldridge Walcott, walking in serene knowledge of a comfortable income while the little lines had gathered in her face. He longed to kick the respectable Mr. Eldridge Walcott from behind.
“There is quite enough money,” he said. “I am doing better than I have—and I shall do better yet.”
She looked down at the bundles. “I might have got a better quality,” she said.
“Take them all back,” said Eldridge. “I’ll take them—”
But she shook her head. “No, they need them to-morrow—and these will do—” She smiled at them. “It’s really more the feeling that you can get better ones, isn’t it? You don’t mind wearing old things—if you know you could have better ones—if you wanted to—” She broke off vaguely.
He saw the box in the attic—all the filmy softness—and he saw the ill-fitting, cheap gloves resting in her lap—That was what had saved her—the real Rosalind. Some one had seen that her soul should be in its own clothes, now and then, and happy and free. You could not quite be jealous of a man who had done that for you—who had clothed Rosalind’s soul, could you?