Why should only other people be able to do that?"
She looked at me closely.
"But I don't want any such coat, Robby."
"Oh, yes," I replied, "you're going to have it.
Let's not have another word about it.
We'll have it sent to-morrow."
She smiled. "Thank you, darling," said she, and kissed me in the middle of the street. "And now your turn." She stopped outside a gentlemen's outfitters.
"Those tails nowl You'll need that to go with the mink.
And that bell-topper you must have, too.
What would you look like in a bell-topper, I wonder?"
"Like a chimneysweep." I looked at the tails.
They lay spread in a window lined with grey velvet.
I looked again at the shop.
It was the same in which I had bought the tie in the spring, after that first time I had been alone with her ahd had got drunk.
Suddenly, I don't know why, I had a choking feeling in the throat.
In the spring—I little dreamed of all this then.
I took Pat's slender hand and for a second laid it to my cheek.
"You need something with it too." said I then; "a mink by itself like that is like a car without an engine.
Two or three evening dresses—"
"Evening dresses," she replied stopping in front of a large window, "evening dresses, that's true—I can't very well do without them."
We selected three wonderful dresses.
I saw how Pat enjoyed this game.
She entered into it completely, for evening dresses were her weakness.
We chose also at the same time the things to go with them, and she became even more lively.
Her eyes were shining.
I stood by and listened to her and laughed and thought what a damned business it was to love a woman and yet be poor.
"Come," said I at last, in a sort of desperate gaiety, "if you do a thing you might as well do it thoroughly." I led her to a jeweller's. "There, that emerald bracelet.
The two rings, and the earrings to match.
No argument now.
Emerald is the right stone for you."
"Then you must have that platinum watch and the pearl studs there for your shirt."
"And you the whole shop.
Less than that, and I have nothing to do with it."
She laughed and with a deep sigh leaned against me.
"Enough, darling, enough.
Now we have to buy only a few trunks and go to the travel bureau, and then we will pack and set off, away from this city and autumn and the rain."
Yes, thought I; my God, yes, and then you would soon get well. "Where shall we go?" I asked. "To Egypt?
Or farther still?
To India, or China?"
"Into the sun, darling, anywhere in the sun and the South and the warm.
Roads with palm trees, rocks, white houses by the sea and aloes . . .
But perhaps it rains there too.
Perhaps it rains everywhere."
"In that case we just move on," said I, "till we come to some place where it doesn't rain—in the middle of the tropics or the Pacific Islands."
We stopped in front of the window of the Hamburg-Amerika Line. In the middle was the model of a liner.
It floated on blue papier-mache waves and immense behind it rose an enlarged photograph of the skyscrapers of Manhattan.
Around the window hung big, brightly coloured maps with routes marked in red.
"We'll go to America too," said Pat. "To Kentucky and Texas and New York and San Francisco and Hawaii.
And then on to South America.
By Mexico and the Panama Canal to Buenos Aires. And then back by Rio de Janeiro."