“Well, what the devil is the matter?”
“What is it?” Gordon asked, stepping to the window.
It had begun to snow on an inch of ice which was still clinging to the stone pavements. At the corner of Broad and Wall Streets the ground dips sharply, forming a difficult crossing.
Gordon saw his wife approaching the bank, laughing. She was dressed in a sealskin cloak which reached to the ground. Its great rolling collar of ermine covered her full breast and stretched upward almost to her hat, rearing its snowy background about her heavy auburn hair, which seemed about to fall and envelop her form. She wore an enormous hat of white fur bent in graceful curves.
She was close to the building now, and her blue eyes were dancing and her cheeks flushed with laughter. The perfect grace and rhythm of movement could be seen even through the heavy seal cloak, whose sheen changed with each touch of her figure.
“Look at the idiots!” cried Overman, excitedly. “So busy stretching their necks to see a woman, there’s five piled up on the ice. They’re ringing for the ambulance. She’s fractured one man’s skull, broken another’s leg, and, by the pale-faced moon, I believe she’s killed one. And you’re after me to meet another woman—great Scott, look, she’s coming in here!”
“Well, she won’t hurt you.”
“I don’t know!”
Overman made a break to reach his inner office when Gordon seized his arm.
“Stop, you fool,” he thundered; “it’s my wife. She’s calling by for me, and you’re going to meet her, if I have to knock you down and sit on you.”