"No you didn't. You saw it over mine."
She sighed and took his arm. "My dear boy, your shoulders aren't broad
enough."
Instantly before his eyes rose the image of a pair of shoulders that
were very broad, objectionably broad, clad in a frogged overcoat with an
astrachan collar. The intrusion of this third person annoyed him as they
went slowly back up the hill.
Curiously enough, it was as Captain Forrester's wife that she most
interested Niel, and it was in her relation to her husband that he most
admired her. Given her other charming attributes, her comprehension of a
man like the railroad-builder, her loyalty to him, stamped her more than
anything else. That, he felt, was quality; something that could never
become worn or shabby; steel of Damascus. His admiration of Mrs.
Forrester went back to that, just as, he felt, she herself went back to
it. He rather liked the stories, even the spiteful ones, about the gay
life she led in Colorado, and the young men she kept dangling about her
every winter. He sometimes thought of the life she might have been
living ever since he had known her,--and the one she had chosen to live.
From that disparity, he believed, came the subtlest thrill of her
fascination. She mocked outrageously at the proprieties she observed,
and inherited the magic of contradictions.