As they drew near the store he became aware that she was deeply excited; there was a little flush in her face, and she walked with quickened step. He laid his hand on her arm protectingly. But she did not slow her pace.

“Plenty of time,” he said softly in her ear.

She only gave him a sidelong glance and hurried on.

“It may not be the one!” she murmured as they entered the store.

“Then we’ll hunt till we find one like it!” he replied valiantly.

Through the elevator grills she recognized the woman who had waited on her before, and she went swiftly toward her.

“We have come to see the coat,” she said simply.

The woman looked at her, almost in pity, it seemed.

“There’s another party interested in the coat—You mean the Chinese coat, I suppose?”

Eleanor’s face was blank. There was a little catch in her throat.

The woman reached down a hand beneath the counter. “We promised to hold it—” She glanced at the clock, and drew out a box.

“The other party said he was pretty sure to take it.”

Through the tissue-paper a maze of blue and gold showed dimly.

She lifted the paper, throwing it back.

“I guess I’m the other party,” said Richard More. He stooped forward, smiling a little.

“Of course you are!” said Eleanor with a breath of relief. “Of course you are—the ’other party’.”

She turned to the woman. “It was my husband wanted to see it,” she said almost proudly.

The woman consulted a slip of paper. “Name of ’More’.” she asked.

Richard nodded. “Let’s have a look at it.”

The woman lifted the garment from the box and flung it wide on the counter before them; and all the color in it glowed softly and the colors that lay on the counter about it glared and seemed hard.

“Pretty thing!” said Richard More. He pulled his mustache a little nervously.

The woman lifted the coat and shook it out.

“Let madam try it on,” she suggested.

She came from behind the counter and placed it on Eleanor’s shoulders, smoothing the folds.

“It’s not a usual garment—Not every one could wear a garment like that.” She moved back a little, gazing with half-closed eyes.

“It suits madam perfectly!”

The husband surveyed it. “Turn around,” he commanded.

Eleanor turned and moved from him down the cleared space to the mirror. And he was conscious of something remote in her movements. She seemed to withdraw, to hold herself removed, wrapped in the blue and gold folds of the coat.

He moved after her and she turned and faced him.

“It’s all right!” he said approvingly.

He half put out his hand to touch an end of blue sleeve that trailed away to a tasselled cord.... Then he withdrew his hand. “It’s all right!” he repeated vaguely.

The clerk came forward and lifted the tassel and let it fall in place; her fingers sprayed over the garment in an easy, official way.

“How much is it?” asked Richard More.

She consulted the tag hanging on a bit of gold cord in front. She dropped it.

“Ninety-five dollars,” she said indifferently.

She stooped to arrange a fold of the coat.

Eleanor More turned a little. She seemed to gaze down with wide, reproachful eyes at the woman’s bent form.

Her husband’s tone was crisp. “We understood the price was—less than that,” he said.

The woman straightened herself and looked at him. “That was last month—for the sale. It was marked down.”

“And now it’s marked up, is it?” he asked a little cynically.

She assented and touched the coat gently with her fingers, stroking it. “It is a coat Mr. Stewart bought himself,” she said—“in China. He found it when he was buying goods—and liked it. But we’ve had it in stock some time, and he told me to mark it down for the sale. After that, when no one bought it”—she seemed to look at Eleanor almost with reproachful eyes—“then he told me to put back the original price.... It’s more than worth it, of course.”

“Of course,” said Richard absently. He was wondering how much Eleanor really wanted the coat.

She had not spoken from the moment it was laid on her shoulders. She seemed to have withdrawn into it—to have become an inaccessible part of its mystery and charm.

“I had not expected—to pay more than fifty dollars,” said Richard More slowly. “I happen to have that amount with me——-”

The woman waited on the suggestion.... She looked at the two people before her.

“I’ll speak to Mr. Stewart—if he hasn’t gone. It’s not like regular stock. I don’t know whether he would sell it for less——”

She moved away from them down the store and they stood, with all the dummy figures standing around, and waited for her.

Richard More did not speak. He longed to ask his wife whether she wanted it as much as that—as much as ninety-five dollars. But he could not shape the words that would say it. He almost wondered whether she would understand—if he asked her.

She stood with her hands hanging idle and her eyes looking down. She was like a prehistoric creature—an Oriental Madonna of ageless form and beauty.... Almost, he fancied, there were tears in the lidded eyes.... He started and turned brusquely.

The clerk was coming back. He looked at her keenly as she came toward them.

She shook her head. “Ninety-five dollars,” she said. “But you can have a charge, of course.”

His hand moved to his pocket and his eyes were on his wife’s face.

She turned, with a shiver of the long silken lines, and she threw back the coat with a laugh.

“How absurd, Richard I—We can’t pay all that money—for a whim!”

His hand stayed itself from the pocket. “Don’t you want it?” he asked doubt-ingly.

“Of course not!” She shook the coat from her and stepped out.

The woman caught it with a quick gesture as it fell.

His hand waited, fingering the coins in his pocket. “I think we could manage it——”

“Oh—! I don’t want it!” She ignored the woman. She moved swiftly past her and was half-way to the elevator. He sprang after her, with a backward glance of apology at the woman, who stood with the coat on her arm, gazing after them.

In the elevator Eleanor shivered a little, and he squeezed her arm in his in the darkness.

“It’s all right!” he said soothingly, beneath his breath.

She nodded and pressed a little against him.

When they stepped into the light he glanced at her face. It had almost a tragic look.

“Better go back and get it,” he said peremptorily. “Hang the price!”

But she shook her head.

Half-way to the door, he touched her arm. “Let’s get it!” he said coax-ingly.

“I don’t want it!” She turned a gaze on him—half-tragic, half-humorous.... “Do you know why I would not get it?” she demanded.

“I don’t know anything!” he declared, jostling through the crowd to keep pace with her. “I’m incapable of knowing—anything!”

She smiled—a little wistful smile—up at him. “I wouldn’t get it.... Can you hear me?”

“Yes. I can hear you.” He bent his head to her, and they moved as a unit through the crowd. “I can hear you. Go ahead!”

“I thought suddenly”—she gasped a little—“how awful it would be if Annabel should ever want to have clothes—things to wear—as badly as I wanted that coat—and all those dear little beasts winding around on it!... It wasn’t a coat!” Her lips were close to his ear, a little smile seemed to run from them to him, and he laughed out.

“It wasn’t a coat!” she said fiercely. “It was a blue and gold temptation—with dragons! I wouldn’t have it—at any price!”

“Not for fifty dollars?” he asked—and he bent a keen look at her unconscious face in the crowd.

“Not if they would give it to me!” she said with swift decision. “I want Annabel to be mild in her nature!”

Richard More followed her. Privately he fancied that Annabel would be a person who would know her own mind. If she wanted a blue and gold coat, she would have it, he thought; and if she didn’t want a blue and gold coat, she wouldn’t have it, he thought.... And William Archer—? Well—blue and gold were not exactly colors to be desired in the case of William Archer. In any case Annabel and William Archer must look out for themselves.

He was going back to-morrow, or the first chance he could, and buy that Chinese coat for his wife. He wanted it for her.... As they made their way out of the store, he saw it again, wrapped about her, and he saw the down-bent face with its look of mystery, rising above the shimmering folds.

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