It seemed to her a very large amount of money, and the way in which it stuffed and bulged her worn old porte-monnaie gave her a feeling of importance such as she had not enjoyed for years.
For a day or two she walked about apparently in a dreamy state, but really absorbed in speculation and calculation. She did not wish to act hastily, to do anything she might afterward regret.
The neighbors sometimes talked of certain “better days” that little Mrs. Sommers had known before she had ever thought of being Mrs. Sommers. She herself indulged in no such morbid retrospection. She had no time—no second of time to devote to the past.
A vision of the future like some dim, gaunt monster sometimes appalled her, but luckily to-morrow never comes.
She went on feeling the soft, sheeny luxurious things—with both hands now, holding them up to see them glisten, and to feel them glide serpent-like through her fingers.
She was not thinking at all. She seemed for the time to be taking a rest from that laborious and fatiguing function and to have abandoned herself to some mechanical impulse that directed her actions and freed her of responsibility.
Her foot and ankle looked very pretty. She could not realize that they belonged to her and were a part of herself.
She was hungry.
The play was over, the music ceased, the crowd filed out. It was like a dream ended.
[…] a poignant wish, a powerful longing that the cable car would never stop anywhere, but go on and on with her forever.
