To the woman, with the finely constant impenetration of love through all her spiritual life, the man’s uncontrollable blaze and his alternate coldness, seem fitful—­weak—­brutish, almost unworthy of a creature with a soul.

To the man who knows the value of his phases of high austerity and understands quite well the price at which he obtains them, the woman who fails to understand the necessity or to appreciate the mood seems sentimental and a little unworthy.

Well, the fact that Rose’s heart was racing and her nerves were tingling with a newly welcomed sense of her lover’s spiritual presence, did not prevent her flying along west on Randolph Street and south again on the west side of State, with a very clearly visualized purpose.  She had forgotten to replace her veil, but at that hour it didn’t matter.  The west side of State Street, anyway, is almost as far from the east as North Clark Street is from the Drive.

As she came abreast of the first of the big department stores which line the west side of this thoroughfare, she saw that her surmise had been correct.  It was open.  Throngs of weary shoppers were crowding out, and a very respectable stream of them were forcing their way in.  She told an exhausted floor-walker that she wanted to buy a dressmaking form.  And, spent as he was, he reflected a little of her own animation in his unusually precise reply; had, indeed, a little of it left over for his next inquirer.

Something automatic in her mind took charge of Rose and delivered her, presently, unconscious of intervening processes, at the counter where the forms were sold.  She selected what she wanted instantly, and counted out the money from her own purse.  She didn’t have to dip into John Galbraith’s hundred and twenty dollars for this.

“Address?” inquired the saleswoman preparing to make out her sales-slip.  Then, as Rose didn’t answer instantly, she looked up frowning into her face.  “You want it sent, don’t you?” she added.

The question was rhetorical, because with its standard, the thing stood five feet high and weighed twenty-five pounds.

A frown of perplexity in Rose’s face gave way to her own wide smile.  “I guess I’ll have to take it with me,” she said.  Because as near Christmas as this, the thing mightn’t be delivered for two days.

“Take it with you?” the woman echoed, aghast.

“Have it wrapped up,” said Rose decisively, “and put my name on it—­Mrs. ...”  She checked herself with another smile.  She had nearly said, “Mrs. Rodney Aldrich.”  But the mistake didn’t hurt as it would have hurt yesterday.  “Doris Dane,” she went on.  “And have it sent down to the main entrance.  I’ll be there as soon as it is.  Do you know where I can buy paper cambric?” But she had to get that information from another floor-walker.