He had gone back for the Chinese coat the Monday morning after they were there. He was waiting at the door when the store opened and he hurried directly to the first floor, too impatient to wait for the elevator to make its trip. The woman saw him coming. She stopped her work and waited.... He fancied her look was a little startled. He told her he would take the coat. He would pay part on it and have the rest charged—he would take it with him. Little by little he grasped the fact that the coat was gone. “But we were here late! There was no one else.... You had no chance to sell it!” He could have believed she was lying to him. But her face was open—and there was unmistakable regret in her voice. “I would have reserved it for you with pleasure over Sunday, or longer—if you had told me.... I thought your wife did not care for it.” “She—she may have thought the price was a little steep,” he admitted. “But I wanted her to have it—I intended she should have it.” “I am sorry. A woman came—not two minutes after you left—I still had the coat on my arm. She must have been in the elevator that came up as you went down.... And the minute she saw the coat she stopped. She seemed to know she wanted it. “I tried it on her right there where we stood, and she bought it and paid for it and took it away.... I don’t think she meant to buy a coat when she came up. She was looking for something else, I think, and happened to see the coat and took a fancy to it and bought it. I’m sorry you did not tell me to save it.... It was much more becoming to your wife. It really seemed made for your wife.” Her voice was full of interest and a gentle kindness. There were no customers in the store; he felt as if he and the woman were alone in a vast place. She was not a mere clerk. She seemed linked with the coat and its destiny, and with their lives. He thanked her and went away. And the next day he went again to see if they could get him a duplicate of the coat—if he left an order. She looked at him tolerantly. “A coat like that,” her glance seemed to say, “is to be taken when you have the chance—and not be coming back for duplicate orders!” “There was not a chance in a thousand,” she told him. “I’ll take your order, of course, and I’ll tell Mr. Stewart. But they don’t make those coats by the dozen; and, besides, it is very, very old—hundreds of years, perhaps.” “I know!” He groaned a little. He seemed to see all the mysterious color of the coat and the shimmer of its folds—and the look in Eleanor’s face. “I hope you can get something like it for us,” he said inanely. He had not gone back to inquire again. They had his address; they were to send him word if they found anything. Mr. Stewart was to make a trip to the East very soon. She would send him word.