Chapter IV

THE SPENDINGS OF FANCY--FACTS ANSWER WITH SNEERS

For the next two days Carrie indulged in the most high-flown
speculations.

Her fancy plunged recklessly into privileges and amusements which
would have been much more becoming had she been cradled a child
of fortune.  With ready will and quick mental selection she
scattered her meagre four-fifty per week with a swift and
graceful hand. Indeed, as she sat in her rocking-chair these
several evenings before going to bed and looked out upon the
pleasantly lighted street, this money cleared for its prospective
possessor the way to every joy and every bauble which the heart
of woman may desire.  "I will have a fine time," she thought.

Her sister Minnie knew nothing of these rather wild cerebrations,
though they exhausted the markets of delight.  She was too busy
scrubbing the kitchen woodwork and calculating the purchasing
power of eighty cents for Sunday's dinner.  When Carrie had
returned home, flushed with her first success and ready, for all
her weariness, to discuss the now interesting events which led up
to her achievement, the former had merely smiled approvingly and
inquired whether she would have to spend any of it for car fare.
This consideration had not entered in before, and it did not now
for long affect the glow of Carrie's enthusiasm.  Disposed as she
then was to calculate upon that vague basis which allows the
subtraction of one sum from another without any perceptible
diminution, she was happy.

When Hanson came home at seven o'clock, he was inclined to be a
little crusty--his usual demeanour before supper.  This never
showed so much in anything he said as in a certain solemnity of
countenance and the silent manner in which he slopped about.  He
had a pair of yellow carpet slippers which he enjoyed wearing,
and these he would immediately substitute for his solid pair of
shoes.  This, and washing his face with the aid of common washing
soap until it glowed a shiny red, constituted his only
preparation for his evening meal. He would then get his evening
paper and read in silence.

For a young man, this was rather a morbid turn of character, and
so affected Carrie.  Indeed, it affected the entire atmosphere of
the flat, as such things are inclined to do, and gave to his
wife's mind its subdued and tactful turn, anxious to avoid
taciturn replies. Under the influence of Carrie's announcement he
brightened up somewhat.

"You didn't lose any time, did you?" he remarked, smiling a
little.

"No," returned Carrie with a touch of pride.

He asked her one or two more questions and then turned to play
with the baby, leaving the subject until it was brought up again
by Minnie at the table.

Carrie, however, was not to be reduced to the common level of
observation which prevailed in the flat.

"It seems to be such a large company," she said, at one place.

"Great big plate-glass windows and lots of clerks.  The man I saw
said they hired ever so many people."

"It's not very hard to get work now," put in Hanson, "if you look
right."

Minnie, under the warming influence of Carrie's good spirits and
her husband's somewhat conversational mood, began to tell Carrie
of some of the well-known things to see--things the enjoyment of
which cost nothing.

"You'd like to see Michigan Avenue.  There are such fine houses.
It is such a fine street."

"Where is H. R. Jacob's?" interrupted Carrie, mentioning one of
the theatres devoted to melodrama which went by that name at the
time.

"Oh, it's not very far from here," answered Minnie. "It's in
Halstead Street, right up here."

"How I'd like to go there.  I crossed Halstead Street to-day,
didn't I?"

At this there was a slight halt in the natural reply. Thoughts
are a strangely permeating factor.  At her suggestion of going to
the theatre, the unspoken shade of disapproval to the doing of
those things which involved the expenditure of money--shades of
feeling which arose in the mind of Hanson and then in Minnie--
slightly affected the atmosphere of the table.  Minnie answered
"yes," but Carrie could feel that going to the theatre was poorly
advocated here.  The subject was put off for a little while until
Hanson, through with his meal, took his paper and went into the
front room.

When they were alone, the two sisters began a somewhat freer
conversation, Carrie interrupting it to hum a little, as they
worked at the dishes.

"I should like to walk up and see Halstead Street, if it isn't
too far," said Carrie, after a time.  "Why don't we go to the
theatre to-night?"

"Oh, I don't think Sven would want to go to-night," returned
Minnie.  "He has to get up so early."

"He wouldn't mind--he'd enjoy it," said Carrie.

"No, he doesn't go very often," returned Minnie.

"Well, I'd like to go," rejoined Carrie.  "Let's you and me go."

Minnie pondered a while, not upon whether she could or would go--
for that point was already negatively settled with her--but upon
some means of diverting the thoughts of her sister to some other
topic.

"We'll go some other time," she said at last, finding no ready
means of escape.

Carrie sensed the root of the opposition at once.

"I have some money," she said.  "You go with me." Minnie shook
her head.

"He could go along," said Carrie.

"No," returned Minnie softly, and rattling the dishes to drown
the conversation.  "He wouldn't."

It had been several years since Minnie had seen Carrie, and in
that time the latter's character had developed a few shades.
Naturally timid in all things that related to her own
advancement, and especially so when without power or resource,
her craving for pleasure was so strong that it was the one stay
of her nature.  She would speak for that when silent on all else.

"Ask him," she pleaded softly.

Minnie was thinking of the resource which Carrie's board would
add.  It would pay the rent and would make the subject of
expenditure a little less difficult to talk about with her
husband.  But if Carrie was going to think of running around in
the beginning there would be a hitch somewhere.  Unless Carrie
submitted to a solemn round of industry and saw the need of hard
work without longing for play, how was her coming to the city to
profit them?  These thoughts were not those of a cold, hard
nature at all.  They were the serious reflections of a mind which
invariably adjusted itself, without much complaining, to such
surroundings as its industry could make for it.

At last she yielded enough to ask Hanson.  It was a half-hearted
procedure without a shade of desire on her part.

"Carrie wants us to go to the theatre," she said, looking in upon
her husband.  Hanson looked up from his paper, and they exchanged
a mild look, which said as plainly as anything: "This isn't what
we expected."

"I don't care to go," he returned.  "What does she want to see?"

"H. R. Jacob's," said Minnie.

He looked down at his paper and shook his head negatively.

When Carrie saw how they looked upon her proposition, she gained
a still clearer feeling of their way of life.  It weighed on her,
but took no definite form of opposition.

"I think I'll go down and stand at the foot of the stairs," she
said, after a time.

Minnie made no objection to this, and Carrie put on her hat and
went below.

"Where has Carrie gone?" asked Hanson, coming back into the
dining-room when he heard the door close.

"She said she was going down to the foot of the stairs," answered
Minnie.  "I guess she just wants to look out a while."

"She oughtn't to be thinking about spending her money on theatres
already, do you think?" he said.

"She just feels a little curious, I guess," ventured Minnie.
"Everything is so new."

"I don't know," said Hanson, and went over to the baby, his
forehead slightly wrinkled.

He was thinking of a full career of vanity and wastefulness which
a young girl might indulge in, and wondering how Carrie could
contemplate such a course when she had so little, as yet, with
which to do.

On Saturday Carrie went out by herself--first toward the river,
which interested her, and then back along Jackson Street, which
was then lined by the pretty houses and fine lawns which
subsequently caused it to be made into a boulevard.  She was
struck with the evidences of wealth, although there was, perhaps,
not a person on the street worth more than a hundred thousand
dollars.  She was glad to be out of the flat, because already she
felt that it was a narrow, humdrum place, and that interest and
joy lay elsewhere.  Her thoughts now were of a more liberal
character, and she punctuated them with speculations as to the
whereabouts of Drouet.  She was not sure but that he might call
anyhow Monday night, and, while she felt a little disturbed at
the possibility, there was, nevertheless, just the shade of a
wish that he would.

On Monday she arose early and prepared to go to work. She dressed
herself in a worn shirt-waist of dotted blue percale, a skirt of
light-brown serge rather faded, and a small straw hat which she
had worn all summer at Columbia City.  Her shoes were old, and
her necktie was in that crumpled, flattened state which time and
much wearing impart.  She made a very average looking shop-girl
with the exception of her features. These were slightly more even
than common, and gave her a sweet, reserved, and pleasing
appearance.

It is no easy thing to get up early in the morning when one is
used to sleeping until seven and eight, as Carrie had been at
home.  She gained some inkling of the character of Hanson's life
when, half asleep, she looked out into the dining-room at six
o'clock and saw him silently finishing his breakfast.  By the
time she was dressed he was gone, and she, Minnie, and the baby
ate together, the latter being just old enough to sit in a high
chair and disturb the dishes with a spoon. Her spirits were
greatly subdued now when the fact of entering upon strange and
untried duties confronted her.  Only the ashes of all her fine
fancies were remaining--ashes still concealing, nevertheless, a
few red embers of hope.  So subdued was she by her weakening
nerves, that she ate quite in silence going over imaginary
conceptions of the character of the shoe company, the nature of
the work, her employer's attitude.  She was vaguely feeling that
she would come in contact with the great owners, that her work
would be where grave, stylishly dressed men occasionally look on.

"Well, good luck," said Minnie, when she was ready to go.  They
had agreed it was best to walk, that morning at least, to see if
she could do it every day--sixty cents a week for car fare being
quite an item under the circumstances.

"I'll tell you how it goes to-night," said Carrie.

Once in the sunlit street, with labourers tramping by in either
direction, the horse-cars passing crowded to the rails with the
small clerks and floor help in the great wholesale houses, and
men and women generally coming out of doors and passing about the
neighbourhood, Carrie felt slightly reassured.  In the sunshine
of the morning, beneath the wide, blue heavens, with a fresh wind
astir, what fears, except the most desperate, can find a
harbourage?  In the night, or the gloomy chambers of the day,
fears and misgivings wax strong, but out in the sunlight there
is, for a time, cessation even of the terror of death.

Carrie went straight forward until she crossed the river, and
then turned into Fifth Avenue.  The thoroughfare, in this part,
was like a walled canon of brown stone and dark red brick.  The
big windows looked shiny and clean.  Trucks were rumbling in
increasing numbers; men and women, girls and boys were moving
onward in all directions.  She met girls of her own age, who
looked at her as if with contempt for her diffidence.  She
wondered at the magnitude of this life and at the importance of
knowing much in order to do anything in it at all.  Dread at her
own inefficiency crept upon her.  She would not know how, she
would not be quick enough.  Had not all the other places refused
her because she did not know something or other?  She would be
scolded, abused, ignominiously discharged.

It was with weak knees and a slight catch in her breathing that
she came up to the great shoe company at Adams and Fifth Avenue
and entered the elevator.  When she stepped out on the fourth
floor there was no one at hand, only great aisles of boxes piled
to the ceiling. She stood, very much frightened, awaiting some
one.

Presently Mr. Brown came up.  He did not seem to recosnise her.

"What is it you want?" he inquired.

Carrie's heart sank.

"You said I should come this morning to see about work--"

"Oh," he interrupted.  "Um--yes.  What is your name?"

"Carrie Meeber."

"Yes," said he.  "You come with me."

He led the way through dark, box-lined aisles which had the smell
of new shoes, until they came to an iron door which opened into
the factory proper.  There was a large, low-ceiled room, with
clacking, rattling machines at which men in white shirt sleeves
and blue gingham aprons were working.  She followed him
diffidently through the clattering automatons, keeping her eyes
straight before her, and flushing slightly. They crossed to a far
corner and took an elevator to the sixth floor.  Out of the array
of machines and benches, Mr. Brown signalled a foreman.

"This is the girl," he said, and turning to Carrie, "You go with
him."  He then returned, and Carrie followed her new superior to
a little desk in a corner, which he used as a kind of official
centre.

"You've never worked at anything like this before, have you?" he
questioned, rather sternly.

"No, sir," she answered.

He seemed rather annoyed at having to bother with such help, but
put down her name and then led her across to where a line of
girls occupied stools in front of clacking machines.  On the
shoulder of one of the girls who was punching eye-holes in one
piece of the upper, by the aid of the machine, he put his hand.

"You," he said, "show this girl how to do what you're doing.
When you get through, come to me."

The girl so addressed rose promptly and gave Carrie her place.

"It isn't hard to do," she said, bending over.  "You just take
this so, fasten it with this clamp, and start the machine."

She suited action to word, fastened the piece of leather, which
was eventually to form the right half of the upper of a man's
shoe, by little adjustable clamps, and pushed a small steel rod
at the side of the machine.  The latter jumped to the task of
punching, with sharp, snapping clicks, cutting circular bits of
leather out of the side of the upper, leaving the holes which
were to hold the laces.  After observing a few times, the girl
let her work at it alone.  Seeing that it was fairly well done,
she went away.

The pieces of leather came from the girl at the machine to her
right, and were passed on to the girl at her left.  Carrie saw at
once that an average speed was necessary or the work would pile
up on her and all those below would be delayed.  She had no time
to look about, and bent anxiously to her task.  The girls at her
left and right realised her predicament and feelings, and, in a
way, tried to aid her, as much as they dared, by working slower.

At this task she laboured incessantly for some time, finding
relief from her own nervous fears and imaginings in the humdrum,
mechanical movement of the machine.  She felt, as the minutes
passed, that the room was not very light.  It had a thick odour
of fresh leather, but that did not worry her.  She felt the eyes
of the other help upon her, and troubled lest she was not working
fast enough.

Once, when she was fumbling at the little clamp, having made a
slight error in setting in the leather, a great hand appeared
before her eyes and fastened the clamp for her.  It was the
foreman.  Her heart thumped so that she could scarcely see to go
on.

"Start your machine," he said, "start your machine. Don't keep
the line waiting."

This recovered her sufficiently and she went excitedly on, hardly
breathing until the shadow moved away from behind her.  Then she
heaved a great breath.

As the morning wore on the room became hotter.  She felt the need
of a breath of fresh air and a drink of water, but did not
venture to stir.  The stool she sat on was without a back or
foot-rest, and she began to feel uncomfortable.  She found, after
a time, that her back was beginning to ache.  She twisted and
turned from one position to another slightly different, but it
did not ease her for long.  She was beginning to weary.

"Stand up, why don't you?" said the girl at her right, without
any form of introduction.  "They won't care."

Carrie looked at her gratefully.  "I guess I will," she said.

She stood up from her stool and worked that way for a while, but
it was a more difficult position.  Her neck and shoulders ached
in bending over.

The spirit of the place impressed itself on her in a rough way.
She did not venture to look around, but above the clack of the
machine she could hear an occasional remark.  She could also note
a thing or two out of the side of her eye.

"Did you see Harry last night?" said the girl at her left,
addressing her neighbour.

"No."

"You ought to have seen the tie he had on.  Gee, but he was a
mark."

"S-s-t," said the other girl, bending over her work. The first,
silenced, instantly assumed a solemn face. The foreman passed
slowly along, eyeing each worker distinctly.  The moment he was
gone, the conversation was resumed again.

"Say," began the girl at her left, "what jeh think he said?"

"I don't know."

"He said he saw us with Eddie Harris at Martin's last night."
"No!"  They both giggled.

A youth with tan-coloured hair, that needed clipping very badly,
came shuffling along between the machines, bearing a basket of
leather findings under his left arm, and pressed against his
stomach.  When near Carrie, he stretched out his right hand and
gripped one girl under the arm.

"Aw, let me go," she exclaimed angrily.  "Duffer."

He only grinned broadly in return.

"Rubber!" he called back as she looked after him. There was
nothing of the gallant in him.

Carrie at last could scarcely sit still.  Her legs began to tire
and she wanted to get up and stretch. Would noon never come?  It
seemed as if she had worked an entire day.  She was not hungry at
all, but weak, and her eyes were tired, straining at the one
point where the eye-punch came down.  The girl at the right
noticed her squirmings and felt sorry for her.  She was
concentrating herself too thoroughly--what she did really
required less mental and physical strain.  There was nothing to
be done, however.  The halves of the uppers came piling steadily
down.  Her hands began to ache at the wrists and then in the
fingers, and towards the last she seemed one mass of dull,
complaining muscles, fixed in an eternal position and performing
a single mechanical movement which became more and more
distasteful, until as last it was absolutely nauseating.  When
she was wondering whether the strain would ever cease, a dull-
sounding bell clanged somewhere down an elevator shaft, and the
end came.  In an instant there was a buzz of action and
conversation. All the girls instantly left their stools and
hurried away in an adjoining room, men passed through, coming
from some department which opened on the right.  The whirling
wheels began to sing in a steadily modifying key, until at last
they died away in a low buzz.  There was an audible stillness, in
which the common voice sounded strange.

Carrie got up and sought her lunch box.  She was stiff, a little
dizzy, and very thirsty.  On the way to the small space portioned
off by wood, where all the wraps and lunches were kept, she
encountered the foreman, who stared at her hard.

"Well," he said, "did you get along all right?"

"I think so," she replied, very respectfully.

"Um," he replied, for want of something better, and walked on.

Under better material conditions, this kind of work would not
have been so bad, but the new socialism which involves pleasant
working conditions for employees had not then taken hold upon
manufacturing companies.

The place smelled of the oil of the machines and the new leather--
a combination which, added to the stale odours of the building,
was not pleasant even in cold weather.  The floor, though
regularly swept every evening, presented a littered surface.  Not
the slightest provision had been made for the comfort of the
employees, the idea being that something was gained by giving
them as little and making the work as hard and unremunerative as
possible.  What we know of foot-rests, swivel-back chairs,
dining-rooms for the girls, clean aprons and curling irons
supplied free, and a decent cloak room, were unthought of.  The
washrooms were disagreeable, crude, if not foul places, and the
whole atmosphere was sordid.

Carrie looked about her, after she had drunk a tinful of water
from a bucket in one corner, for a place to sit and eat.  The
other girls had ranged themselves about the windows or the work-
benches of those of the men who had gone out.  She saw no place
which did not hold a couple or a group of girls, and being too
timid to think of intruding herself, she sought out her machine
and, seated upon her stool, opened her lunch on her lap.  There
she sat listening to the chatter and comment about her.  It was,
for the most part, silly and graced by the current slang.
Several of the men in the room exchanged compliments with the
girls at long range.

"Say, Kitty," called one to a girl who was doing a waltz step in
a few feet of space near one of the windows, "are you going to
the ball with me?"

"Look out, Kitty," called another, "you'll jar your back hair."

"Go on, Rubber," was her only comment.

As Carrie listened to this and much more of similar familiar
badinage among the men and girls, she instinctively withdrew into
herself.  She was not used to this type, and felt that there was
something hard and low about it all.  She feared that the young
boys about would address such remarks to her--boys who, beside
Drouet, seemed uncouth and ridiculous.  She made the average
feminine distinction between clothes, putting worth, goodness,
and distinction in a dress suit, and leaving all the unlovely
qualities and those beneath notice in overalls and jumper.

She was glad when the short half hour was over and the wheels
began to whirr again.  Though wearied, she would be
inconspicuous.  This illusion ended when another young man passed
along the aisle and poked her indifferently in the ribs with his
thumb.  She turned about, indignation leaping to her eyes, but he
had gone on and only once turned to grin.  She found it difficult
to conquer an inclination to cry.

The girl next her noticed her state of mind.  "Don't you mind,"
she said.  "He's too fresh."

Carrie said nothing, but bent over her work.  She felt as though
she could hardly endure such a life.  Her idea of work had been
so entirely different.  All during the long afternoon she thought
of the city outside and its imposing show, crowds, and fine
buildings.  Columbia City and the better side of her home life
came back.  By three o'clock she was sure it must be six, and by
four it seemed as if they had forgotten to note the hour and were
letting all work overtime.  The foreman became a true ogre,
prowling constantly about, keeping her tied down to her miserable
task.  What she heard of the conversation about her only made her
feel sure that she did not want to make friends with any of
these.  When six o'clock came she hurried eagerly away, her arms
aching and her limbs stiff from sitting in one position.

As she passed out along the hall after getting her hat, a young
machine hand, attracted by her looks, made bold to jest with her.

"Say, Maggie," he called, "if you wait, I'll walk with you."

It was thrown so straight in her direction that she knew who was
meant, but never turned to look.

In the crowded elevator, another dusty, toil-stained youth tried
to make an impression on her by leering in her face.

One young man, waiting on the walk outside for the appearance of
another, grinned at her as she passed.

"Ain't going my way, are you?" he called jocosely.

Carrie turned her face to the west with a subdued heart.  As she
turned the corner, she saw through the great shiny window the
small desk at which she had applied.  There were the crowds,
hurrying with the same buzz and energy-yielding enthusiasm.  She
felt a slight relief, but it was only at her escape.  She felt
ashamed in the face of better dressed girls who went by.  She
felt as though she should be better served, and her heart
revolted.

Chapter V

A GLITTERING NIGHT FLOWER--THE USE OF A NAME

Drouet did not call that evening.  After receiving the letter, he
had laid aside all thought of Carrie for the time being and was
floating around having what he considered a gay time.  On this
particular evening he dined at "Rector's," a restaurant of some
local fame, which occupied a basement at Clark and Monroe
Streets. There--after he visited the resort of Fitzgerald and
Moy's in Adams Street, opposite the imposing Federal Building.
There he leaned over the splendid bar and swallowed a glass of
plain whiskey and purchased a couple of cigars, one of which he
lighted.  This to him represented in part high life--a fair
sample of what the whole must be.  Drouet was not a drinker in
excess. He was not a moneyed man.  He only craved the best, as
his mind conceived it, and such doings seemed to him a part of
the best.  Rector's, with its polished marble walls and floor,
its profusion of lights, its show of china and silverware, and,
above all, its reputation as a resort for actors and professional
men, seemed to him the proper place for a successful man to go.
He loved fine clothes, good eating, and particularly the company
and acquaintanceship of successful men.  When dining, it was a
source of keen satisfaction to him to know that Joseph Jefferson
was wont to come to this same place, or that Henry E. Dixie, a
well-known performer of the day, was then only a few tables off.
At Rector's he could always obtain this satisfaction, for there
one could encounter politicians, brokers, actors, some rich young
"rounders" of the town, all eating and drinking amid a buzz of
popular commonplace conversation.

"That's So-and-so over there," was a common remark of these
gentlemen among themselves, particularly among those who had not
yet reached, but hoped to do so, the dazzling height which money
to dine here lavishly represented.

"You don't say so," would be the reply.

"Why, yes, didn't you know that?  Why, he's manager of the Grand
Opera House."

When these things would fall upon Drouet's ears, he would
straighten himself a little more stiffly and eat with solid
comfort.  If he had any vanity, this augmented it, and if he had
any ambition, this stirred it.  He would be able to flash a roll
of greenbacks too some day.  As it was, he could eat where THEY
did.

His preference for Fitzgerald and Moy's Adams Street place was
another yard off the same cloth.  This was really a gorgeous
saloon from a Chicago standpoint. Like Rector's, it was also
ornamented with a blaze of incandescent lights, held in handsome
chandeliers.  The floors were of brightly coloured tiles, the
walls a composition of rich, dark, polished wood, which reflected
the light, and coloured stucco-work, which gave the place a very
sumptuous appearance.  The long bar was a blaze of lights,
polished woodwork, coloured and cut glassware, and many fancy
bottles.  It was a truly swell saloon, with rich screens, fancy
wines, and a line of bar goods unsurpassed in the country.

At Rector's, Drouet had met Mr. G. W. Hurstwood, manager of
Fitzgerald and Moy's.  He had been pointed out as a very
successful and well-known man about town. Hurstwood looked the
part, for, besides being slightly under forty, he had a good,
stout constitution, an active manner, and a solid, substantial
air, which was composed in part of his fine clothes, his clean
linen, his jewels, and, above all, his own sense of his
importance.  Drouet immediately conceived a notion of him as
being some one worth knowing, and was glad not only to meet him,
but to visit the Adams Street bar thereafter whenever he wanted a
drink or a cigar.

Hurstwood was an interesting character after his kind. He was
shrewd and clever in many little things, and capable of creating
a good impression.  His managerial position was fairly important--
a kind of stewardship which was imposing, but lacked financial
control.  He had risen by perseverance and industry, through long
years of service, from the position of barkeeper in a commonplace
saloon to his present altitude.  He had a little office in the
place, set off in polished cherry and grill-work, where he kept,
in a roll-top desk, the rather simple accounts of the place--
supplies ordered and needed.  The chief executive and financial
functions devolved upon the owners--Messrs. Fitzgerald and Moy--
and upon a cashier who looked after the money taken in.

For the most part he lounged about, dressed in excellent tailored
suits of imported goods, a solitaire ring, a fine blue diamond in
his tie, a striking vest of some new pattern, and a watch-chain
of solid gold, which held a charm of rich design, and a watch of
the latest make and engraving.  He knew by name, and could greet
personally with a "Well, old fellow," hundreds of actors,
merchants, politicians, and the general run of successful
characters about town, and it was part of his success to do so.
He had a finely graduated scale of informality and friendship,
which improved from the "How do you do?" addressed to the
fifteen-dollar-a-week clerks and office attaches, who, by long
frequenting of the place, became aware of his position, to the
"Why, old man, how are you?" which he addressed to those noted or
rich individuals who knew him and were inclined to be friendly.
There was a class, however, too rich, too famous, or too
successful, with whom he could not attempt any familiarity of
address, and with these he was professionally tactful, assuming a
grave and dignified attitude, paying them the deference which
would win their good feeling without in the least compromising
his own bearing and opinions.  There were, in the last place, a
few good followers, neither rich nor poor, famous, nor yet
remarkably successful, with whom he was friendly on the score of
good-fellowship. These were the kind of men with whom he would
converse longest and most seriously.  He loved to go out and have
a good time once in a while--to go to the races, the theatres,
the sporting entertainments at some of the clubs.  He kept a
horse and neat trap, had his wife and two children, who were well
established in a neat house on the North Side near Lincoln Park,
and was altogether a very acceptable individual of our great
American upper class--the first grade below the luxuriously rich.

Hurstwood liked Drouet.  The latter's genial nature and dressy
appearance pleased him.  He knew that Drouet was only a
travelling salesman--and not one of many years at that--but the
firm of Bartlett, Caryoe & Company was a large and prosperous
house, and Drouet stood well. Hurstwood knew Caryoe quite well,
having drunk a glass now and then with him, in company with
several others, when the conversation was general.  Drouet had
what was a help in his business, a moderate sense of humour, and
could tell a good story when the occasion required.  He could
talk races with Hurstwood, tell interesting incidents concerning
himself and his experiences with women, and report the state of
trade in the cities which he visited, and so managed to make
himself almost invariably agreeable.  To-night he was
particularly so, since his report to the company had been
favourably commented upon, his new samples had been
satisfactorily selected, and his trip marked out for the next six
weeks.

"Why, hello, Charlie, old man," said Hurstwood, as Drouet came in
that evening about eight o'clock.  "How goes it?"  The room was
crowded.

Drouet shook hands, beaming good nature, and they strolled
towards the bar.

"Oh, all right."

"I haven't seen you in six weeks.  When did you get in?"

"Friday," said Drouet.  "Had a fine trip."

"Glad of it," said Hurstwood, his black eyes lit with a warmth
which half displaced the cold make-believe that usually dwelt in
them.  "What are you going to take?" he added, as the barkeeper,
in snowy jacket and tie, leaned toward them from behind the bar.

"Old Pepper," said Drouet.

"A little of the same for me," put in Hurstwood.

"How long are you in town this time?" inquired Hurstwood.

"Only until Wednesday.  I'm going up to St. Paul."

"George Evans was in here Saturday and said he saw you in
Milwaukee last week."

"Yes, I saw George," returned Drouet.  "Great old boy, isn't he?
We had quite a time there together."

The barkeeper was setting out the glasses and bottle before them,
and they now poured out the draught as they talked, Drouet
filling his to within a third of full, as was considered proper,
and Hurstwood taking the barest suggestion of whiskey and
modifying it with seltzer.

"What's become of Caryoe?" remarked Hurstwood.  "I haven't seen
him around here in two weeks."

"Laid up, they say," exclaimed Drouet.  "Say, he's a gouty old
boy!"

"Made a lot of money in his time, though, hasn't he?"

"Yes, wads of it," returned Drouet.  "He won't live much longer.
Barely comes down to the office now."

"Just one boy, hasn't he?" asked Hurstwood.

"Yes, and a swift-pacer," laughed Drouet.

"I guess he can't hurt the business very much, though, with the
other members all there."

"No, he can't injure that any, I guess."

Hurstwood was standing, his coat open, his thumbs in his pockets,
the light on his jewels and rings relieving them with agreeable
distinctness.  He was the picture of fastidious comfort.

To one not inclined to drink, and gifted with a more serious turn
of mind, such a bubbling, chattering, glittering chamber must
ever seem an anomaly, a strange commentary on nature and life.
Here come the moths, in endless procession, to bask in the light
of the flame. Such conversation as one may hear would not warrant
a commendation of the scene upon intellectual grounds. It seems
plain that schemers would choose more sequestered quarters to
arrange their plans, that politicians would not gather here in
company to discuss anything save formalities, where the sharp-
eared may hear, and it would scarcely be justified on the score
of thirst, for the majority of those who frequent these more
gorgeous places have no craving for liquor. Nevertheless, the
fact that here men gather, here chatter, here love to pass and
rub elbows, must be explained upon some grounds.  It must be that
a strange bundle of passions and vague desires give rise to such
a curious social institution or it would not be.

Drouet, for one, was lured as much by his longing for pleasure as
by his desire to shine among his betters. The many friends he met
here dropped in because they craved, without, perhaps,
consciously analysing it, the company, the glow, the atmosphere
which they found. One might take it, after all, as an augur of
the better social order, for the things which they satisfied
here, though sensory, were not evil.  No evil could come out of
the contemplation of an expensively decorated chamber.  The worst
effect of such a thing would be, perhaps, to stir up in the
material-minded an ambition to arrange their lives upon a
similarly splendid basis. In the last analysis, that would
scarcely be called the fault of the decorations, but rather of
the innate trend of the mind.  That such a scene might stir the
less expensively dressed to emulate the more expensively dressed
could scarcely be laid at the door of anything save the false
ambition of the minds of those so affected.  Remove the element
so thoroughly and solely complained of--liquor--and there would
not be one to gainsay the qualities of beauty and enthusiasm
which would remain.  The pleased eye with which our modern
restaurants of fashion are looked upon is proof of this
assertion.

Yet, here is the fact of the lighted chamber, the dressy, greedy
company, the small, self-interested palaver, the disorganized,
aimless, wandering mental action which it represents--the love of
light and show and finery which, to one outside, under the serene
light of the eternal stars, must seem a strange and shiny thing.
Under the stars and sweeping night winds, what a lamp-flower it
must bloom; a strange, glittering night-flower, odour-yielding,
insect-drawing, insect-infested rose of pleasure.

"See that fellow coming in there?" said Hurstwood, glancing at a
gentleman just entering, arrayed in a high hat and Prince Albert
coat, his fat cheeks puffed and red as with good eating.

"No, where?" said Drouet.

"There," said Hurstwood, indicating the direction by a cast of
his eye, "the man with the silk hat."

"Oh, yes," said Drouet, now affecting not to see.  "Who is he?"

"That's Jules Wallace, the spiritualist."

Drouet followed him with his eyes, much interested.

"Doesn't look much like a man who sees spirits, does he?" said
Drouet.

"Oh, I don't know," returned Hurstwood.  "He's got the money, all
right," and a little twinkle passed over his eyes.

"I don't go much on those things, do you?" asked Drouet.

"Well, you never can tell," said Hurstwood.  "There may be
something to it.  I wouldn't bother about it myself, though.  By
the way," he added, "are you going anywhere to-night?"

"'The Hole in the Ground,'" said Drouet, mentioning the popular
farce of the time.

"Well, you'd better be going.  It's half after eight already,"
and he drew out his watch.

The crowd was already thinning out considerably--some bound for
the theatres, some to their clubs, and some to that most
fascinating of all the pleasures--for the type of man there
represented, at least--the ladies.

"Yes, I will," said Drouet.

"Come around after the show.  I have something I want to show
you," said Hurstwood.

"Sure," said Drouet, elated.

"You haven't anything on hand for the night, have you?" added
Hurstwood.

"Not a thing."

"Well, come round, then."

"I struck a little peach coming in on the train Friday," remarked
Drouet, by way of parting.  "By George, that's so, I must go and
call on her before I go away."

"Oh, never mind her," Hurstwood remarked.

"Say, she was a little dandy, I tell you," went on Drouet
confidentially, and trying to impress his friend.

"Twelve o'clock," said Hurstwood.

"That's right," said Drouet, going out.

Thus was Carrie's name bandied about in the most frivolous and
gay of places, and that also when the little toiler was bemoaning
her narrow lot, which was almost inseparable from the early
stages of this, her unfolding fate.

Chapter VI

THE MACHINE AND THE MAIDEN--A KNIGHT OF TO-DAY

At the flat that evening Carrie felt a new phase of its
atmosphere.  The fact that it was unchanged, while her feelings
were different, increased her knowledge of its character.
Minnie, after the good spirits Carrie manifested at first,
expected a fair report.  Hanson supposed that Carrie would be
satisfied.

"Well," he said, as he came in from the hall in his working
clothes, and looked at Carrie through the dining-room door, "how
did you make out?"

"Oh," said Carrie, "it's pretty hard.  I don't like it."

There was an air about her which showed plainer than any words
that she was both weary and disappointed.

"What sort of work is it?" he asked, lingering a moment as he
turned upon his heel to go into the bathroom.

"Running a machine," answered Carrie.

It was very evident that it did not concern him much, save from
the side of the flat's success.  He was irritated a shade because
it could not have come about in the throw of fortune for Carrie
to be pleased.

Minnie worked with less elation than she had just before Carrie
arrived.  The sizzle of the meat frying did not sound quite so
pleasing now that Carrie had reported her discontent.  To Carrie,
the one relief of the whole day would have been a jolly home, a
sympathetic reception, a bright supper table, and some one to
say: "Oh, well, stand it a little while.  You will get something
better," but now this was ashes. She began to see that they
looked upon her complaint as unwarranted, and that she was
supposed to work on and say nothing.  She knew that she was to
pay four dollars for her board and room, and now she felt that it
would be an exceedingly gloomy round, living with these people.

Minnie was no companion for her sister--she was too old.  Her
thoughts were staid and solemnly adapted to a condition.  If
Hanson had any pleasant thoughts or happy feelings he concealed
them.  He seemed to do all his mental operations without the aid
of physical expression.  He was as still as a deserted chamber.
Carrie, on the other hand, had the blood of youth and some
imagination.  Her day of love and the mysteries of courtship were
still ahead.  She could think of things she would like to do, of
clothes she would like to wear, and of places she would like to
visit.  These were the things upon which her mind ran, and it was
like meeting with opposition at every turn to find no one here to
call forth or respond to her feelings.

She had forgotten, in considering and explaining the result of
her day, that Drouet might come.  Now, when she saw how
unreceptive these two people were, she hoped he would not.  She
did not know exactly what she would do or how she would explain
to Drouet, if he came. After supper she changed her clothes.
When she was trimly dressed she was rather a sweet little being,
with large eyes and a sad mouth. Her face expressed the mingled
expectancy, dissatisfaction, and depression she felt.  She
wandered about after the dishes were put away, talked a little
with Minnie, and then decided to go down and stand in the door at
the foot of the stairs. If Drouet came, she could meet him there.
Her face took on the semblance of a look of happiness as she put
on her hat to go below.

"Carrie doesn't seem to like her place very well," said Minnie to
her husband when the latter came out, paper in hand, to sit in
the dining-room a few minutes.

"She ought to keep it for a time, anyhow," said Hanson. "Has she
gone downstairs?"

"Yes," said Minnie.

"I'd tell her to keep it if I were you.  She might be here weeks
without getting another one."

Minnie said she would, and Hanson read his paper.

"If I were you," he said a little later, "I wouldn't let her
stand in the door down there.  It don't look good."

"I'll tell her," said Minnie.

The life of the streets continued for a long time to interest
Carrie.  She never wearied of wondering where the people in the
cars were going or what their enjoyments were.  Her imagination
trod a very narrow round, always winding up at points which
concerned money, looks, clothes, or enjoyment.  She would have a
far-off thought of Columbia City now and then, or an irritating
rush of feeling concerning her experiences of the present day,
but, on the whole, the little world about her enlisted her whole
attention.

The first floor of the building, of which Hanson's flat was the
third, was occupied by a bakery, and to this, while she was
standing there, Hanson came down to buy a loaf of bread.  She was
not aware of his presence until he was quite near her.

"I'm after bread," was all he said as he passed.

The contagion of thought here demonstrated itself. While Hanson
really came for bread, the thought dwelt with him that now he
would see what Carrie was doing. No sooner did he draw near her
with that in mind than she felt it.  Of course, she had no
understanding of what put it into her head, but, nevertheless, it
aroused in her the first shade of real antipathy to him.  She
knew now that she did not like him.  He was suspicious.

A thought will colour a world for us.  The flow of Carrie's
meditations had been disturbed, and Hanson had not long gone
upstairs before she followed.  She had realised with the lapse of
the quarter hours that Drouet was not coming, and somehow she
felt a little resentful, a little as if she had been forsaken--
was not good enough.  She went upstairs, where everything was
silent.  Minnie was sewing by a lamp at the table. Hanson had
already turned in for the night.  In her weariness and
disappointment Carrie did no more than announce that she was
going to bed.

"Yes, you'd better," returned Minnie.  "You've got to get up
early, you know."

The morning was no better.  Hanson was just going out the door as
Carrie came from her room.  Minnie tried to talk with her during
breakfast, but there was not much of interest which they could
mutually discuss.  As on the previous morning, Carrie walked down
town, for she began to realise now that her four-fifty would not
even allow her car fare after she paid her board.  This seemed a
miserable arrangement.  But the morning light swept away the
first misgivings of the day, as morning light is ever wont to do.

At the shoe factory she put in a long day, scarcely so wearisome
as the preceding, but considerably less novel.  The head foreman,
on his round, stopped by her machine.

"Where did you come from?" he inquired.

"Mr. Brown hired me," she replied.

"Oh, he did, eh!" and then, "See that you keep things going."

The machine girls impressed her even less favourably. They seemed
satisfied with their lot, and were in a sense "common." Carrie
had more imagination than they. She was not used to slang.  Her
instinct in the matter of dress was naturally better.  She
disliked to listen to the girl next to her, who was rather
hardened by experience.

"I'm going to quit this," she heard her remark to her neighbour.
"What with the stipend and being up late, it's too much for me
health."

They were free with the fellows, young and old, about the place,
and exchanged banter in rude phrases, which at first shocked her.
She saw that she was taken to be of the same sort and addressed
accordingly.

"Hello," remarked one of the stout-wristed sole-workers to her at
noon.  "You're a daisy." He really expected to hear the common
"Aw! go chase yourself!" in return, and was sufficiently abashed,
by Carrie's silently moving away, to retreat, awkwardly grinning.

That night at the flat she was even more lonely--the dull
situation was becoming harder to endure.  She could see that the
Hansons seldom or never had any company.  Standing at the street
door looking out, she ventured to walk out a little way.  Her
easy gait and idle manner attracted attention of an offensive but
common sort.  She was slightly taken back at the overtures of a
well-dressed man of thirty, who in passing looked at her, reduced
his pace, turned back, and said:

"Out for a little stroll, are you, this evening?"

Carrie looked at him in amazement, and then summoned sufficient
thought to reply: "Why, I don't know you," backing away as she
did so.

"Oh, that don't matter," said the other affably.

She bandied no more words with him, but hurried away, reaching
her own door quite out of breath.  There was something in the
man's look which frightened her.

During the remainder of the week it was very much the same.  One
or two nights she found herself too tired to walk home, and
expended car fare.  She was not very strong, and sitting all day
affected her back.  She went to bed one night before Hanson.

Transplantation is not always successful in the matter of flowers
or maidens.  It requires sometimes a richer soil, a better
atmosphere to continue even a natural growth.  It would have been
better if her acclimatization had been more gradual--less rigid.
She would have done better if she had not secured a position so
quickly, and had seen more of the city which she constantly
troubled to know about.

On the first morning it rained she found that she had no
umbrella.  Minnie loaned her one of hers, which was worn and
faded.  There was the kind of vanity in Carrie that troubled at
this.  She went to one of the great department stores and bought
herself one, using a dollar and a quarter of her small store to
pay for it.

"What did you do that for, Carrie?" asked Minnie when she saw it.

"Oh, I need one," said Carrie.

"You foolish girl."

Carrie resented this, though she did not reply.  She was not
going to be a common shop-girl, she thought; they need not think
it, either.

On the first Saturday night Carrie paid her board, four dollars.
Minnie had a quaver of conscience as she took it, but did not
know how to explain to Hanson if she took less.  That worthy gave
up just four dollars less toward the household expenses with a
smile of satisfaction.  He contemplated increasing his Building
and Loan payments.  As for Carrie, she studied over the problem
of finding clothes and amusement on fifty cents a week.  She
brooded over this until she was in a state of mental rebellion.

"I'm going up the street for a walk," she said after supper.

"Not alone, are you?" asked Hanson.

"Yes," returned Carrie.

"I wouldn't," said Minnie.

"I want to see SOMETHING," said Carrie, and by the tone she put
into the last word they realised for the first time she was not
pleased with them.

"What's the matter with her?" asked Hanson, when she went into
the front room to get her hat.

"I don't know," said Minnie.

"Well, she ought to know better than to want to go out alone."

Carrie did not go very far, after all.  She returned and stood in
the door.  The next day they went out to Garfield Park, but it
did not please her.  She did not look well enough.  In the shop
next day she heard the highly coloured reports which girls give
of their trivial amusements.  They had been happy.  On several
days it rained and she used up car fare.  One night she got
thoroughly soaked, going to catch the car at Van Buren Street.
All that evening she sat alone in the front room looking out upon
the street, where the lights were reflected on the wet pavements,
thinking. She had imagination enough to be moody.

On Saturday she paid another four dollars and pocketed her fifty
cents in despair.  The speaking acquaintanceship which she formed
with some of the girls at the shop discovered to her the fact
that they had more of their earnings to use for themselves than
she did.  They had young men of the kind whom she, since her
experience with Drouet, felt above, who took them about.  She
came to thoroughly dislike the light-headed young fellows of the
shop.  Not one of them had a show of refinement.  She saw only
their workday side.

There came a day when the first premonitory blast of winter swept
over the city.  It scudded the fleecy clouds in the heavens,
trailed long, thin streamers of smoke from the tall stacks, and
raced about the streets and corners in sharp and sudden puffs.
Carrie now felt the problem of winter clothes.  What was she to
do? She had no winter jacket, no hat, no shoes.  It was difficult
to speak to Minnie about this, but at last she summoned the
courage.

"I don't know what I'm going to do about clothes," she said one
evening when they were together.  "I need a hat."

Minnie looked serious.

"Why don't you keep part of your money and buy yourself one?" she
suggested, worried over the situation which the withholding of
Carrie's money would create.

"I'd like to for a week or so, if you don't mind," ventured
Carrie.

"Could you pay two dollars?" asked Minnie.

Carrie readily acquiesced, glad to escape the trying situation,
and liberal now that she saw a way out.  She was elated and began
figuring at once.  She needed a hat first of all.  How Minnie
explained to Hanson she never knew.  He said nothing at all, but
there were thoughts in the air which left disagreeable
impressions.

The new arrangement might have worked if sickness had not
intervened.  It blew up cold after a rain one afternoon when
Carrie was still without a jacket.  She came out of the warm shop
at six and shivered as the wind struck her.  In the morning she
was sneezing, and going down town made it worse.  That day her
bones ached and she felt light-headed.  Towards evening she felt
very ill, and when she reached home was not hungry.  Minnie
noticed her drooping actions and asked her about herself.

"I don't know," said Carrie.  "I feel real bad."

She hung about the stove, suffered a chattering chill, and went
to bed sick.  The next morning she was thoroughly feverish.

Minnie was truly distressed at this, but maintained a kindly
demeanour.  Hanson said perhaps she had better go back home for a
while.  When she got up after three days, it was taken for
granted that her position was lost.  The winter was near at hand,
she had no clothes, and now she was out of work.

"I don't know," said Carrie; "I'll go down Monday and see if I
can't get something."

If anything, her efforts were more poorly rewarded on this trial
than the last.  Her clothes were nothing suitable for fall
wearing.  Her last money she had spent for a hat.  For three days
she wandered about, utterly dispirited.  The attitude of the flat
was fast becoming unbearable.  She hated to think of going back
there each evening.  Hanson was so cold.  She knew it could not
last much longer.  Shortly she would have to give up and go home.

On the fourth day she was down town all day, having borrowed ten
cents for lunch from Minnie.  She had applied in the cheapest
kind of places without success. She even answered for a waitress
in a small restaurant where she saw a card in the window, but
they wanted an experienced girl.  She moved through the thick
throng of strangers, utterly subdued in spirit.  Suddenly a hand
pulled her arm and turned her about.

"Well, well!" said a voice.  In the first glance she beheld
Drouet.  He was not only rosy-cheeked, but radiant.  He was the
essence of sunshine and good-humour.  "Why, how are you, Carrie?"
he said.  "You're a daisy.  Where have you been?"

Carrie smiled under his irresistible flood of geniality.

"I've been out home," she said.

"Well," he said, "I saw you across the street there. I thought it
was you.  I was just coming out to your place.  How are you,
anyhow?"

"I'm all right," said Carrie, smiling.

Drouet looked her over and saw something different.

"Well," he said, "I want to talk to you.  You're not going
anywhere in particular, are you?"

"Not just now," said Carrie.

"Let's go up here and have something to eat.  George! but I'm
glad to see you again."

She felt so relieved in his radiant presence, so much looked
after and cared for, that she assented gladly, though with the
slightest air of holding back.

"Well," he said, as he took her arm--and there was an exuberance
of good-fellowship in the word which fairly warmed the cockles of
her heart.

They went through Monroe Street to the old Windsor dining-room,
which was then a large, comfortable place, with an excellent
cuisine and substantial service. Drouet selected a table close by
the window, where the busy rout of the street could be seen.  He
loved the changing panorama of the street--to see and be seen as
he dined.

"Now," he said, getting Carrie and himself comfortably settled,
"what will you have?"

Carrie looked over the large bill of fare which the waiter handed
her without really considering it.  She was very hungry, and the
things she saw there awakened her desires, but the high prices
held her attention. "Half broiled spring chicken--seventy-five.
Sirloin steak with mushrooms--one twenty-five." She had dimly
heard of these things, but it seemed strange to be called to
order from the list.

"I'll fix this," exclaimed Drouet.  "Sst! waiter."

That officer of the board, a full-chested, round-faced negro,
approached, and inclined his ear.

"Sirloin with mushrooms," said Drouet.  "Stuffed tomatoes."

"Yassah," assented the negro, nodding his head.

"Hashed brown potatoes."

"Yassah."

"Asparagus."

"Yassah."

"And a pot of coffee."

Drouet turned to Carrie.  "I haven't had a thing since breakfast.
Just got in from Rock Island.  I was going off to dine when I saw
you."

Carrie smiled and smiled.

"What have you been doing?" he went on.  "Tell me all about
yourself.  How is your sister?"

"She's well," returned Carrie, answering the last query.

He looked at her hard.

"Say," he said, "you haven't been sick, have you?"

Carrie nodded.

"Well, now, that's a blooming shame, isn't it?  You don't look
very well.  I thought you looked a little pale.  What have you
been doing?"

"Working," said Carrie.

"You don't say so!  At what?"

She told him.

"Rhodes, Morgenthau and Scott--why, I know that house. over here
on Fifth Avenue, isn't it?  They're a close-fisted concern.  What
made you go there?"

"I couldn't get anything else," said Carrie frankly.

"Well, that's an outrage," said Drouet.  "You oughtn't to be
working for those people.  Have the factory right back of the
store, don't they?"

"Yes," said Carrie.

"That isn't a good house," said Drouet.  "You don't want to work
at anything like that, anyhow."

He chatted on at a great rate, asking questions, explaining
things about himself, telling her what a good restaurant it was,
until the waiter returned with an immense tray, bearing the hot
savoury dishes which had been ordered.  Drouet fairly shone in
the matter of serving.  He appeared to great advantage behind the
white napery and silver platters of the table and displaying his
arms with a knife and fork.  As he cut the meat his rings almost
spoke.  His new suit creaked as he stretched to reach the plates,
break the bread, and pour the coffee.  He helped Carrie to a
rousing plateful and contributed the warmth of his spirit to her
body until she was a new girl.  He was a splendid fellow in the
true popular understanding of the term, and captivated Carrie
completely.

That little soldier of fortune took her good turn in an easy way.
She felt a little out of place, but the great room soothed her
and the view of the well-dressed throng outside seemed a splendid
thing.  Ah, what was it not to have money!  What a thing it was
to be able to come in here and dine!  Drouet must be fortunate.
He rode on trains, dressed in such nice clothes, was so strong,
and ate in these fine places.  He seemed quite a figure of a man,
and she wondered at his friendship and regard for her.

"So you lost your place because you got sick, eh?" he said.
"What are you going to do now?"

"Look around," she said, a thought of the need that hung outside
this fine restaurant like a hungry dog at her heels passing into
her eyes.

"Oh, no," said Drouet, "that won't do.  How long have you been
looking?"

"Four days," she answered.

"Think of that!" he said, addressing some problematical
individual.  "You oughtn't to be doing anything like that.  These
girls," and he waved an inclusion of all shop and factory girls,
"don't get anything.  Why, you can't live on it, can you?"

He was a brotherly sort of creature in his demeanour. When he had
scouted the idea of that kind of toil, he took another tack.
Carrie was really very pretty. Even then, in her commonplace
garb, her figure was evidently not bad, and her eyes were large
and gentle. Drouet looked at her and his thoughts reached home.
She felt his admiration.  It was powerfully backed by his
liberality and good-humour.  She felt that she liked him--that
she could continue to like him ever so much.  There was something
even richer than that, running as a hidden strain, in her mind.
Every little while her eyes would meet his, and by that means the
interchanging current of feeling would be fully connected.

"Why don't you stay down town and go to the theatre with me?" he
said, hitching his chair closer.  The table was not very wide.

"Oh, I can't," she said.

"What are you going to do to-night?"

"Nothing," she answered, a little drearily.

"You don't like out there where you are, do you?"

"Oh, I don't know."

"What are you going to do if you don't get work?"

"Go back home, I guess."

There was the least quaver in her voice as she said this.
Somehow, the influence he was exerting was powerful.  They came
to an understanding of each other without words--he of her
situation, she of the fact that he realised it.
"No," he said, "you can't make it!" genuine sympathy filling his
mind for the time.  "Let me help you.  You take some of my
money."

"Oh, no!" she said, leaning back.

"What are you going to do?" he said.

She sat meditating, merely shaking her head.

He looked at her quite tenderly for his kind.  There were some
loose bills in his vest pocket--greenbacks. They were soft and
noiseless, and he got his fingers about them and crumpled them up
in his hand.

"Come on," he said, "I'll see you through all right. Get yourself
some clothes."

It was the first reference he had made to that subject, and now
she realised how bad off she was.  In his crude way he had struck
the key-note.  Her lips trembled a little.

She had her hand out on the table before her.  They were quite
alone in their corner, and he put his larger, warmer hand over
it.

"Aw, come, Carrie," he said, "what can you do alone? Let me help
you."

He pressed her hand gently and she tried to withdraw it.  At this
he held it fast, and she no longer protested.  Then he slipped
the greenbacks he had into her palm, and when she began to
protest, he whispered:

"I'll loan it to you--that's all right.  I'll loan it to you."

He made her take it.  She felt bound to him by a strange tie of
affection now.  They went out, and he walked with her far out
south toward Polk Street, talking.

"You don't want to live with those people?" he said in one place,
abstractedly.  Carrie heard it, but it made only a slight
impression.

"Come down and meet me to morrow," he said, "and we'll go to the
matinee.  Will you?"

Carrie protested a while, but acquiesced.

"You're not doing anything.  Get yourself a nice pair of shoes
and a jacket."

She scarcely gave a thought to the complication which would
trouble her when he was gone.  In his presence, she was of his
own hopeful, easy-way-out mood.

"Don't you bother about those people out there," he said at
parting.  "I'll help you."

Carrie left him, feeling as though a great arm had slipped out
before her to draw off trouble.  The money she had accepted was
two soft, green, handsome ten-dollar bills.

Chapter X

THE COUNSEL OF WINTER--FORTUNE'S AMBASSADOR CALLS

In the light of the world's attitude toward woman and her duties,
the nature of Carrie's mental state deserves consideration.
Actions such as hers are measured by an arbitrary scale.  Society
possesses a conventional standard whereby it judges all things.
All men should be good, all women virtuous.  Wherefore, villain,
hast thou failed?

For all the liberal analysis of Spencer and our modern
naturalistic philosophers, we have but an infantile perception of
morals.  There is more in the subject than mere conformity to a
law of evolution.  It is yet deeper than conformity to things of
earth alone.  It is more involved than we, as yet, perceive.
Answer, first, why the heart thrills; explain wherefore some
plaintive note goes wandering about the world, undying; make
clear the rose's subtle alchemy evolving its ruddy lamp in light
and rain.  In the essence of these facts lie the first principles
of morals.

"Oh," thought Drouet, "how delicious is my conquest."

"Ah," thought Carrie, with mournful misgivings, "what is it I
have lost?"

Before this world-old proposition we stand, serious, interested,
confused; endeavouring to evolve the true theory of morals--the
true answer to what is right.

In the view of a certain stratum of society, Carrie was
comfortably established--in the eyes of the starveling, beaten by
every wind and gusty sheet of rain, she was safe in a halcyon
harbour.  Drouet had taken three rooms, furnished, in Ogden
Place, facing Union Park, on the West Side.  That was a little,
green-carpeted breathing spot, than which, to-day, there is
nothing more beautiful in Chicago.  It afforded a vista pleasant
to contemplate.  The best room looked out upon the lawn of the
park, now sear and brown, where a little lake lay sheltered.
Over the bare limbs of the trees, which now swayed in the wintry
wind, rose the steeple of the Union Park Congregational Church,
and far off the towers of several others.

The rooms were comfortably enough furnished.  There was a good
Brussels carpet on the floor, rich in dull red and lemon shades,
and representing large jardinieres filled with gorgeous,
impossible flowers.  There was a large pier-glass mirror between
the two windows.  A large, soft, green, plush-covered couch
occupied one corner, and several rocking-chairs were set about.
Some pictures, several rugs, a few small pieces of bric-a-brac,
and the tale of contents is told.

In the bedroom, off the front room, was Carrie's trunk, bought by
Drouet, and in the wardrobe built into the wall quite an array of
clothing--more than she had ever possessed before, and of very
becoming designs.  There was a third room for possible use as a
kitchen, where Drouet had Carrie establish a little portable gas
stove for the preparation of small lunches, oysters, Welsh
rarebits, and the like, of which he was exceedingly fond; and,
lastly, a bath.  The whole place was cosey, in that it was
lighted by gas and heated by furnace registers, possessing also a
small grate, set with an asbestos back, a method of cheerful
warming which was then first coming into use.  By her industry
and natural love of order, which now developed, the place
maintained an air pleasing in the extreme.

Here, then, was Carrie, established in a pleasant fashion, free
of certain difficulties which most ominously confronted her,
laden with many new ones which were of a mental order, and
altogether so turned about in all of her earthly relationships
that she might well have been a new and different individual.
She looked into her glass and saw a prettier Carrie than she had
seen before; she looked into her mind, a mirror prepared of her
own and the world's opinions, and saw a worse.  Between these two
images she wavered, hesitating which to believe.

"My, but you're a little beauty," Drouet was wont to exclaim to
her.

She would look at him with large, pleased eyes.

"You know it, don't you?" he would continue.

"Oh, I don't know," she would reply, feeling delight in the fact
that one should think so, hesitating to believe, though she
really did, that she was vain enough to think so much of herself.

Her conscience, however, was not a Drouet, interested to praise.
There she heard a different voice, with which she argued,
pleaded, excused.  It was no just and sapient counsellor, in its
last analysis.  It was only an average little conscience, a thing
which represented the world, her past environment, habit,
convention, in a confused way.  With it, the voice of the people
was truly the voice of God.

"Oh, thou failure!" said the voice.

"Why?" she questioned.

"Look at those about," came the whispered answer. "Look at those
who are good.  How would they scorn to do what you have done.
Look at the good girls; how will they draw away from such as you
when they know you have been weak.  You had not tried before you
failed."

It was when Carrie was alone, looking out across the park, that
she would be listening to this.  It would come infrequently--when
something else did not interfere, when the pleasant side was not
too apparent, when Drouet was not there.  It was somewhat clear
in utterance at first, but never wholly convincing.  There was
always an answer, always the December days threatened.  She was
alone; she was desireful; she was fearful of the whistling wind.
The voice of want made answer for her.

Once the bright days of summer pass by, a city takes on that
sombre garb of grey, wrapt in which it goes about its labours
during the long winter.  Its endless buildings look grey, its sky
and its streets assume a sombre hue; the scattered, leafless
trees and wind-blown dust and paper but add to the general
solemnity of colour.  There seems to be something in the chill
breezes which scurry through the long, narrow thoroughfares
productive of rueful thoughts.  Not poets alone, nor artists, nor
that superior order of mind which arrogates to itself all
refinement, feel this, but dogs and all men.  These feel as much
as the poet, though they have not the same power of expression.
The sparrow upon the wire, the cat in the doorway, the dray horse
tugging his weary load, feel the long, keen breaths of winter.
It strikes to the heart of all life, animate and inanimate.  If
it were not for the artificial fires of merriment, the rush of
profit-seeking trade, and pleasure-selling amusements; if the
various merchants failed to make the customary display within and
without their establishments; if our streets were not strung with
signs of gorgeous hues and thronged with hurrying purchasers, we
would quickly discover how firmly the chill hand of winter lays
upon the heart; how dispiriting are the days during which the sun
withholds a portion of our allowance of light and warmth.  We are
more dependent upon these things than is often thought.  We are
insects produced by heat, and pass without it.

In the drag of such a grey day the secret voice would reassert
itself, feebly and more feebly.

Such mental conflict was not always uppermost.  Carrie was not by
any means a gloomy soul.  More, she had not the mind to get firm
hold upon a definite truth.  When she could not find her way out
of the labyrinth of ill-logic which thought upon the subject
created, she would turn away entirely.

Drouet, all the time, was conducting himself in a model way for
one of his sort.  He took her about a great deal, spent money
upon her, and when he travelled took her with him.  There were
times when she would be alone for two or three days, while he
made the shorter circuits of his business, but, as a rule, she
saw a great deal of him.

"Say, Carrie," he said one morning, shortly after they had so
established themselves, "I've invited my friend Hurstwood to come
out some day and spend the evening with us."

"Who is he?" asked Carrie.  doubtfully.

"Oh, he's a nice man.  He's manager of Fitzgerald and Moy's."

"What's that?" said Carrie.

"The finest resort in town.  It's a way-up, swell place."

Carrie puzzled a moment.  She was wondering what Drouet had told
him, what her attitude would be.

"That's all right," said Drouet, feeling her thought. "He doesn't
know anything.  You're Mrs. Drouet now."

There was something about this which struck Carrie as slightly
inconsiderate.  She could see that Drouet did not have the
keenest sensibilities.

"Why don't we get married?" she inquired, thinking of the voluble
promises he had made.

"Well, we will," he said, "just as soon as I get this little deal
of mine closed up."

He was referring to some property which he said he had, and which
required so much attention, adjustment, and what not, that
somehow or other it interfered with his free moral, personal
actions.

"Just as soon as I get back from my Denver trip in January we'll
do it."

Carrie accepted this as basis for hope--it was a sort of salve to
her conscience, a pleasant way out.  Under the circumstances,
things would be righted.  Her actions would be justified.
She really was not enamoured of Drouet.  She was more clever than
he.  In a dim way, she was beginning to see where he lacked.  If
it had not been for this, if she had not been able to measure and
judge him in a way, she would have been worse off than she was.
She would have adored him.  She would have been utterly wretched
in her fear of not gaining his affection, of losing his interest,
of being swept away and left without an anchorage.  As it was,
she wavered a little, slightly anxious, at first, to gain him
completely, but later feeling at ease in waiting.  She was not
exactly sure what she thought of him--what she wanted to do.

When Hurstwood called, she met a man who was more clever than
Drouet in a hundred ways.  He paid that peculiar deference to
women which every member of the sex appreciates.  He was not
overawed, he was not overbold.  His great charm was
attentiveness.  Schooled in winning those birds of fine feather
among his own sex, the merchants and professionals who visited
his resort, he could use even greater tact when endeavouring to
prove agreeable to some one who charmed him.  In a pretty woman
of any refinement of feeling whatsoever he found his greatest
incentive.  He was mild, placid, assured, giving the impression
that he wished to be of service only--to do something which would
make the lady more pleased.

Drouet had ability in this line himself when the game was worth
the candle, but he was too much the egotist to reach the polish
which Hurstwood possessed.  He was too buoyant, too full of ruddy
life, too assured.  He succeeded with many who were not quite
schooled in the art of love.  He failed dismally where the woman
was slightly experienced and possessed innate refinement. In the
case of Carrie he found a woman who was all of the latter, but
none of the former.  He was lucky in the fact that opportunity
tumbled into his lap, as it were.  A few years later, with a
little more experience, the slightest tide of success, and he had
not been able to approach Carrie at all.

"You ought to have a piano here, Drouet," said Hurstwood, smiling
at Carrie, on the evening in question, "so that your wife could
play."

Drouet had not thought of that.

"So we ought," he observed readily.

"Oh, I don't play," ventured Carrie.

"It isn't very difficult," returned Hurstwood.  "You could do
very well in a few weeks."

He was in the best form for entertaining this evening. His
clothes were particularly new and rich in appearance.  The coat
lapels stood out with that medium stiffness which excellent cloth
possesses.  The vest was of a rich Scotch plaid, set with a
double row of round mother-of-pearl buttons.  His cravat was a
shiny combination of silken threads, not loud, not inconspicuous.
What he wore did not strike the eye so forcibly as that which
Drouet had on, but Carrie could see the elegance of the material.
Hurstwood's shoes were of soft, black calf, polished only to a
dull shine.  Drouet wore patent leather but Carrie could not help
feeling that there was a distinction in favour of the soft
leather, where all else was so rich.  She noticed these things
almost unconsciously.  They were things which would naturally
flow from the situation. She was used to Drouet's appearance.

"Suppose we have a little game of euchre?" suggested Hurstwood,
after a light round of conversation.  He was rather dexterous in
avoiding everything that would suggest that he knew anything of
Carrie's past.  He kept away from personalities altogether, and
confined himself to those things which did not concern
individuals at all.  By his manner, he put Carrie at her ease,
and by his deference and pleasantries he amused her.  He
pretended to be seriously interested in all she said.

"I don't know how to play," said Carrie.

"Charlie, you are neglecting a part of your duty," he observed to
Drouet most affably.  "Between us, though," he went on, "we can
show you."

By his tact he made Drouet feel that he admired his choice.
There was something in his manner that showed that he was pleased
to be there.  Drouet felt really closer to him than ever before.
It gave him more respect for Carrie.  Her appearance came into a
new light, under Hurstwood's appreciation.  The situation livened
considerably.

"Now, let me see," said Hurstwood, looking over Carrie's shoulder
very deferentially.  "What have you?" He studied for a moment.
"That's rather good," he said.

"You're lucky.  Now, I'll show you how to trounce your husband.
You take my advice."

"Here," said Drouet, "if you two are going to scheme together, I
won't stand a ghost of a show.  Hurstwood's a regular sharp."

"No, it's your wife.  She brings me luck.  Why shouldn't she
win?"

Carrie looked gratefully at Hurstwood, and smiled at Drouet.  The
former took the air of a mere friend.  He was simply there to
enjoy himself.  Anything that Carrie did was pleasing to him,
nothing more.

"There," he said, holding back one of his own good cards, and
giving Carrie a chance to take a trick.  "I count that clever
playing for a beginner."

The latter laughed gleefully as she saw the hand coming her way.
It was as if she were invincible when Hurstwood helped her.

He did not look at her often.  When he did, it was with a mild
light in his eye.  Not a shade was there of anything save
geniality and kindness.  He took back the shifty, clever gleam,
and replaced it with one of innocence.  Carrie could not guess
but that it was pleasure with him in the immediate thing.  She
felt that he considered she was doing a great deal.

"It's unfair to let such playing go without earning something,"
he said after a time, slipping his finger into the little coin
pocket of his coat.  "Let's play for dimes."

"All right," said Drouet, fishing for bills.

Hurstwood was quicker.  His fingers were full of new ten-cent
pieces.  "Here we are," he said, supplying each one with a little
stack.

"Oh, this is gambling," smiled Carrie.  "It's bad."

"No," said Drouet, "only fun.  If you never play for more than
that, you will go to Heaven."

"Don't you moralise," said Hurstwood to Carrie gently, "until you
see what becomes of the money."

Drouet smiled.

"If your husband gets them, he'll tell you how bad it is."

Drouet laughed loud.

There was such an ingratiating tone about Hurstwood's voice, the
insinuation was so perceptible that even Carrie got the humour of
it.

"When do you leave?" said Hurstwood to Drouet.

"On Wednesday," he replied.

"It's rather hard to have your husband running about like that,
isn't it?" said Hurstwood, addressing Carrie.

"She's going along with me this time," said Drouet.

"You must both go with me to the theatre before you go."

"Certainly," said Drouet.  "Eh, Carrie?"

"I'd like it ever so much," she replied.

Hurstwood did his best to see that Carrie won the money.  He
rejoiced in her success, kept counting her winnings, and finally
gathered and put them in her extended hand.  They spread a little
lunch, at which he served the wine, and afterwards he used fine
tact in going.

"Now," he said, addressing first Carrie and then Drouet with his
eyes, "you must be ready at 7.30.  I'll come and get you."

They went with him to the door and there was his cab waiting, its
red lamps gleaming cheerfully in the shadow.

"Now," he observed to Drouet, with a tone of good-fellowship,
"when you leave your wife alone, you must let me show her around
a little.  It will break up her loneliness."

"Sure," said Drouet, quite pleased at the attention shown.

"You're so kind," observed Carrie.

"Not at all," said Hurstwood, "I would want your husband to do as
much for me."

He smiled and went lightly away.  Carrie was thoroughly
impressed.  She had never come in contact with such grace.  As
for Drouet, he was equally pleased.

"There's a nice man," he remarked to Carrie, as they returned to
their cosey chamber.  "A good friend of mine, too."

"He seems to be," said Carrie.

Chapter XI

THE PERSUASION OF FASHION--FEELING GUARDS O'ER ITS OWN

Carrie was an apt student of fortune's ways--of fortune's
superficialities.  Seeing a thing, she would immediately set to
inquiring how she would look, properly related to it.  Be it
known that this is not fine feeling, it is not wisdom.  The
greatest minds are not so afflicted; and on the contrary, the
lowest order of mind is not so disturbed.  Fine clothes to her
were a vast persuasion; they spoke tenderly and Jesuitically for
themselves.  When she came within earshot of their pleading,
desire in her bent a willing ear.  The voice of the so-called
inanimate!  Who shall translate for us the language of the
stones?

"My dear," said the lace collar she secured from Partridge's, "I
fit you beautifully; don't give me up."

"Ah, such little feet," said the leather of the soft new shoes;
"how effectively I cover them.  What a pity they should ever want
my aid."

Once these things were in her hand, on her person, she might
dream of giving them up; the method by which they came might
intrude itself so forcibly that she would ache to be rid of the
thought of it, but she would not give them up.  "Put on the old
clothes--that torn pair of shoes," was called to her by her
conscience in vain.  She could possibly have conquered the fear
of hunger and gone back; the thought of hard work and a narrow
round of suffering would, under the last pressure of conscience,
have yielded, but spoil her appearance?--be old-clothed and poor-
appearing?--never!

Drouet heightened her opinion on this and allied subjects in such
a manner as to weaken her power of resisting their influence.  It
is so easy to do this when the thing opined is in the line of
what we desire. In his hearty way, he insisted upon her good
looks.  He looked at her admiringly, and she took it at its full
value.  Under the circumstances, she did not need to carry
herself as pretty women do.  She picked that knowledge up fast
enough for herself.  Drouet had a habit, characteristic of his
kind, of looking after stylishly dressed or pretty women on the
street and remarking upon them.  He had just enough of the
feminine love of dress to be a good judge--not of intellect, but
of clothes.  He saw how they set their little feet, how they
carried their chins, with what grace and sinuosity they swung
their bodies.  A dainty, self-conscious swaying of the hips by a
woman was to him as alluring as the glint of rare wine to a
toper.  He would turn and follow the disappearing vision with his
eyes.  He would thrill as a child with the unhindered passion
that was in him.  He loved the thing that women love in
themselves, grace.  At this, their own shrine, he knelt with
them, an ardent devotee.

"Did you see that woman who went by just now?" he said to Carrie
on the first day they took a walk together. "Fine stepper, wasn't
she?"

Carrie looked, and observed the grace commended.

"Yes, she is," she returned, cheerfully, a little suggestion of
possible defect in herself awakening in her mind.  If that was so
fine, she must look at it more closely.  Instinctively, she felt
a desire to imitate it.  Surely she could do that too.

When one of her mind sees many things emphasized and re-
emphasized and admired, she gathers the logic of it and applies
accordingly.  Drouet was not shrewd enough to see that this was
not tactful.  He could not see that it would be better to make
her feel that she was competing with herself, not others better
than herself. He would not have done it with an older, wiser
woman, but in Carrie he saw only the novice.  Less clever than
she, he was naturally unable to comprehend her sensibility.  He
went on educating and wounding her, a thing rather foolish in one
whose admiration for his pupil and victim was apt to grow.

Carrie took the instructions affably.  She saw what Drouet liked;
in a vague way she saw where he was weak. It lessens a woman's
opinion of a man when she learns that his admiration is so
pointedly and generously distributed.  She sees but one object of
supreme compliment in this world, and that is herself.  If a man
is to succeed with many women, he must be all in all to each.

In her own apartments Carrie saw things which were lessons in the
same school.

In the same house with her lived an official of one of the
theatres, Mr. Frank A. Hale, manager of the Standard, and his
wife, a pleasing-looking brunette of thirty-five.  They were
people of a sort very common in America today, who live
respectably from hand to mouth.  Hale received a salary of forty-
five dollars a week.  His wife, quite attractive, affected the
feeling of youth, and objected to that sort of home life which
means the care of a house and the raising of a family.  Like
Drouet and Carrie, they also occupied three rooms on the floor
above.

Not long after she arrived Mrs. Hale established social relations
with her, and together they went about.  For a long time this was
her only companionship, and the gossip of the manager's wife
formed the medium through which she saw the world.  Such
trivialities, such praises of wealth, such conventional
expression of morals as sifted through this passive creature's
mind, fell upon Carrie and for the while confused her.

On the other hand, her own feelings were a corrective influence.
The constant drag to something better was not to be denied.  By
those things which address the heart was she steadily recalled.
In the apartments across the hall were a young girl and her
mother.  They were from Evansville, Indiana, the wife and
daughter of a railroad treasurer.  The daughter was here to study
music, the mother to keep her company.

Carrie did not make their acquaintance, but she saw the daughter
coming in and going out.  A few times she had seen her at the
piano in the parlour, and not infrequently had heard her play.
This young woman was particularly dressy for her station, and
wore a jewelled ring or two which flashed upon her white fingers
as she played.

Now Carrie was affected by music.  Her nervous composition
responded to certain strains, much as certain strings of a harp
vibrate when a corresponding key of a piano is struck.  She was
delicately moulded in sentiment, and answered with vague
ruminations to certain wistful chords.  They awoke longings for
those things which she did not have.  They caused her to cling
closer to things she possessed.  One short song the young lady
played in a most soulful and tender mood.  Carrie heard it
through the open door from the parlour below.  It was at that
hour between afternoon and night when, for the idle, the
wanderer, things are apt to take on a wistful aspect.  The mind
wanders forth on far journeys and returns with sheaves of
withered and departed joys.  Carrie sat at her window looking
out.  Drouet had been away since ten in the morning.  She had
amused herself with a walk, a book by Bertha M. Clay which Drouet
had left there, though she did not wholly enjoy the latter, and
by changing her dress for the evening.  Now she sat looking out
across the park as wistful and depressed as the nature which
craves variety and life can be under such circumstances.  As she
contemplated her new state, the strain from the parlour below
stole upward.  With it her thoughts became coloured and enmeshed.
She reverted to the things which were best and saddest within the
small limit of her experience.  She became for the moment a
repentant.

While she was in this mood Drouet came in, bringing with him an
entirely different atmosphere.  It was dusk and Carrie had
neglected to light the lamp.  The fire in the grate, too, had
burned low.

"Where are you, Cad?" he said, using a pet name he had given her.

"Here," she answered.

There was something delicate and lonely in her voice, but he
could not hear it.  He had not the poetry in him that would seek
a woman out under such circumstances and console her for the
tragedy of life.  Instead, he struck a match and lighted the gas.

"Hello," he exclaimed, "you've been crying."

Her eyes were still wet with a few vague tears.

"Pshaw," he said, "you don't want to do that."

He took her hand, feeling in his good-natured egotism that it was
probably lack of his presence which had made her lonely.

"Come on, now," he went on; "it's all right.  Let's waltz a
little to that music."

He could not have introduced a more incongruous proposition.  It
made clear to Carrie that he could not sympathise with her.  She
could not have framed thoughts which would have expressed his
defect or made clear the difference between them, but she felt
it.  It was his first great mistake.

What Drouet said about the girl's grace, as she tripped out
evenings accompanied by her mother, caused Carrie to perceive the
nature and value of those little modish ways which women adopt
when they would presume to be something.  She looked in the
mirror and pursed up her lips, accompanying it with a little toss
of the head, as she had seen the railroad treasurer's daughter
do.  She caught up her skirts with an easy swing, for had not
Drouet remarked that in her and several others, and Carrie was
naturally imitative.  She began to get the hang of those little
things which the pretty woman who has vanity invariably adopts.
In short, her knowledge of grace doubled, and with it her
appearance changed.  She became a girl of considerable taste.

Drouet noticed this.  He saw the new bow in her hair and the new
way of arranging her locks which she affected one morning.

"You look fine that way, Cad," he said.

"Do I?" she replied, sweetly.  It made her try for other effects
that selfsame day.

She used her feet less heavily, a thing that was brought about by
her attempting to imitate the treasurer's daughter's graceful
carriage.  How much influence the presence of that young woman in
the same house had upon her it would be difficult to say.  But,
because of all these things, when Hurstwood called he had found a
young woman who was much more than the Carrie to whom Drouet had
first spoken.  The primary defects of dress and manner had
passed.  She was pretty, graceful, rich in the timidity born of
uncertainty, and with a something childlike in her large eyes
which captured the fancy of this starched and conventional poser
among men.  It was the ancient attraction of the fresh for the
stale.  If there was a touch of appreciation left in him for the
bloom and unsophistication which is the charm of youth, it
rekindled now.  He looked into her pretty face and felt the
subtle waves of young life radiating therefrom.  In that large
clear eye he could see nothing that his blase nature could
understand as guile.  The little vanity, if he could have
perceived it there, would have touched him as a pleasant thing.

"I wonder," he said, as he rode away in his cab, "how Drouet came
to win her."

He gave her credit for feelings superior to Drouet at the first
glance.

The cab plopped along between the far-receding lines of gas lamps
on either hand.  He folded his gloved hands and saw only the
lighted chamber and Carrie's face.  He was pondering over the
delight of youthful beauty.

"I'll have a bouquet for her," he thought.  "Drouet won't mind."
He never for a moment concealed the fact of her attraction for
himself.  He troubled himself not at all about Drouet's priority.
He was merely floating those gossamer threads of thought which,
like the spider's, he hoped would lay hold somewhere.  He did not
know, he could not guess, what the result would be.

A few weeks later Drouet, in his peregrinations, encountered one
of his well-dressed lady acquaintances in Chicago on his return
from a short trip to Omaha.  He had intended to hurry out to
Ogden Place and surprise Carrie, but now he fell into an
interesting conversation and soon modified his original
intention.

"Let's go to dinner," he said, little recking any chance meeting
which might trouble his way.

"Certainly," said his companion.

They visited one of the better restaurants for a social chat.  It
was five in the afternoon when they met; it was seven-thirty
before the last bone was picked.

Drouet was just finishing a little incident he was relating, and
his face was expanding into a smile, when Hurstwood's eye caught
his own.  The latter had come in with several friends, and,
seeing Drouet and some woman, not Carrie, drew his own
conclusion.

"Ah, the rascal," he thought, and then, with a touch of righteous
sympathy, "that's pretty hard on the little girl."

Drouet jumped from one easy thought to another as he caught
Hurstwood's eye.  He felt but very little misgiving, until he saw
that Hurstwood was cautiously pretending not to see.  Then some
of the latter's impression forced itself upon him.  He thought of
Carrie and their last meeting.  By George, he would have to
explain this to Hurstwood.  Such a chance half-hour with an old
friend must not have anything more attached to it than it really
warranted.

For the first time he was troubled.  Here was a moral
complication of which he could not possibly get the ends.
Hurstwood would laugh at him for being a fickle boy.  He would
laugh with Hurstwood.  Carrie would never hear, his present
companion at table would never know, and yet he could not help
feeling that he was getting the worst of it--there was some faint
stigma attached, and he was not guilty.  He broke up the dinner
by becoming dull, and saw his companion on her car.  Then he went
home.

"He hasn't talked to me about any of these later flames," thought
Hurstwood to himself.  "He thinks I think he cares for the girl
out there."

"He ought not to think I'm knocking around, since I have just
introduced him out there," thought Drouet.

"I saw you," Hurstwood said, genially, the next time Drouet
drifted in to his polished resort, from which he could not stay
away.  He raised his forefinger indicatively, as parents do to
children.

"An old acquaintance of mine that I ran into just as I was coming
up from the station," explained Drouet.  "She used to be quite a
beauty."

"Still attracts a little, eh?" returned the other, affecting to
jest.

"Oh, no," said Drouet, "just couldn't escape her this time."

"How long are you here?" asked Hurstwood.

"Only a few days."

"You must bring the girl down and take dinner with me," he said.
"I'm afraid you keep her cooped up out there.  I'll get a box for
Joe Jefferson."

"Not me," answered the drummer.  "Sure I'll come."

This pleased Hurstwood immensely.  He gave Drouet no credit for
any feelings toward Carrie whatever.  He envied him, and now, as
he looked at the well-dressed jolly salesman, whom he so much
liked, the gleam of the rival glowed in his eye.  He began to
"size up" Drouet from the standpoints of wit and fascination.  He
began to look to see where he was weak.  There was no disputing
that, whatever he might think of him as a good fellow, he felt a
certain amount of contempt for him as a lover.  He could hoodwink
him all right.  Why, if he would just let Carrie see one such
little incident as that of Thursday, it would settle the matter.
He ran on in thought, almost exulting, the while he laughed and
chatted, and Drouet felt nothing.  He had no power of analysing
the glance and the atmosphere of a man like Hurstwood.  He stood
and smiled and accepted the invitation while his friend examined
him with the eye of a hawk.

The object of this peculiarly involved comedy was not thinking of
either.  She was busy adjusting her thoughts and feelings to
newer conditions, and was not in danger of suffering disturbing
pangs from either quarter.
One evening Drouet found her dressing herself before the glass.

"Cad," said he, catching her, "I believe you're getting vain."

"Nothing of the kind," she returned, smiling.

"Well, you're mighty pretty," he went on, slipping his arm around
her.  "Put on that navy-blue dress of yours and I'll take you to
the show."

"Oh, I've promised Mrs. Hale to go with her to the Exposition to-
night," she returned, apologetically.

"You did, eh?" he said, studying the situation abstractedly.  "I
wouldn't care to go to that myself."

"Well, I don't know," answered Carrie, puzzling, but not offering
to break her promise in his favour.

Just then a knock came at their door and the maidservant handed a
letter in.

"He says there's an answer expected," she explained.

"It's from Hurstwood," said Drouet, noting the superscription as
he tore it open.

"You are to come down and see Joe Jefferson with me to-night," it
ran in part.  "It's my turn, as we agreed the other day.  All
other bets are off."

"Well, what do you say to this?" asked Drouet, innocently, while
Carrie's mind bubbled with favourable replies.

"You had better decide, Charlie," she said, reservedly.

"I guess we had better go, if you can break that engagement
upstairs," said Drouet.

"Oh, I can," returned Carrie without thinking.

Drouet selected writing paper while Carrie went to change her
dress.  She hardly explained to herself why this latest
invitation appealed to her most

"Shall I wear my hair as I did yesterday?" she asked, as she came
out with several articles of apparel pending.

"Sure," he returned, pleasantly.

She was relieved to see that he felt nothing.  She did not credit
her willingness to go to any fascination Hurstwood held for her.
It seemed that the combination of Hurstwood, Drouet, and herself
was more agreeable than anything else that had been suggested.
She arrayed herself most carefully and they started off,
extending excuses upstairs.

"I say," said Hurstwood, as they came up the theatre lobby, "we
are exceedingly charming this evening."

Carrie fluttered under his approving glance.

"Now, then," he said, leading the way up the foyer into the
theatre.

If ever there was dressiness it was here.  It was the
personification of the old term spick and span.

"Did you ever see Jefferson?" he questioned, as he leaned toward
Carrie in the box.

"I never did," she returned.

"He's delightful, delightful," he went on, giving the commonplace
rendition of approval which such men know.  He sent Drouet after
a programme, and then discoursed to Carrie concerning Jefferson
as he had heard of him.  The former was pleased beyond
expression, and was really hypnotised by the environment, the
trappings of the box, the elegance of her companion.  Several
times their eyes accidentally met, and then there poured into
hers such a flood of feeling as she had never before experienced.
She could not for the moment explain it, for in the next glance
or the next move of the hand there was seeming indifference,
mingled only with the kindest attention.

Drouet shared in the conversation, but he was almost dull in
comparison.  Hurstwood entertained them both, and now it was
driven into Carrie's mind that here was the superior man.  She
instinctively felt that he was stronger and higher, and yet
withal so simple.  By the end of the third act she was sure that
Drouet was only a kindly soul, but otherwise defective.  He sank
every moment in her estimation by the strong comparison.

"I have had such a nice time," said Carrie, when it was all over
and they were coming out.

"Yes, indeed," added Drouet, who was not in the least aware that
a battle had been fought and his defences weakened.  He was like
the Emperor of China, who sat glorying in himself, unaware that
his fairest provinces were being wrested from him.

"Well, you have saved me a dreary evening," returned Hurstwood.
"Good-night."

He took Carrie's little hand, and a current of feeling swept from
one to the other.

"I'm so tired," said Carrie, leaning back in the car when Drouet
began to talk.

"Well, you rest a little while I smoke," he said, rising, and
then he foolishly went to the forward platform of the car and
left the game as it stood.

Chapter XII

OF THE LAMPS OF THE MANSIONS--THE AMBASSADOR PLEA

Mrs. Hurstwood was not aware of any of her husband's moral
defections, though she might readily have suspected his
tendencies, which she well understood.  She was a woman upon
whose action under provocation you could never count.  Hurstwood,
for one, had not the slightest idea of what she would do under
certain circumstances.  He had never seen her thoroughly aroused.
In fact, she was not a woman who would fly into a passion.  She
had too little faith in mankind not to know that they were
erring.  She was too calculating to jeopardize any advantage she
might gain in the way of information by fruitless clamour.  Her
wrath would never wreak itself in one fell blow.  She would wait
and brood, studying the details and adding to them until her
power might be commensurate with her desire for revenge.  At the
same time, she would not delay to inflict any injury, big or
little, which would wound the object of her revenge and still
leave him uncertain as to the source of the evil.  She was a
cold, self-centred woman, with many a thought of her own which
never found expression, not even by so much as the glint of an
eye.

Hurstwood felt some of this in her nature, though he did not
actually perceive it.  He dwelt with her in peace and some
satisfaction.  He did not fear her in the least--there was no
cause for it.  She still took a faint pride in him, which was
augmented by her desire to have her social integrity maintained.
She was secretly somewhat pleased by the fact that much of her
husband's property was in her name, a precaution which Hurstwood
had taken when his home interests were somewhat more alluring
than at present.  His wife had not the slightest reason to feel
that anything would ever go amiss with their household, and yet
the shadows which run before gave her a thought of the good of it
now and then.  She was in a position to become refractory with
considerable advantage, and Hurstwood conducted himself
circumspectly because he felt that he could not be sure of
anything once she became dissatisfied.

It so happened that on the night when Hurstwood, Carrie, and
Drouet were in the box at McVickar's, George, Jr., was in the
sixth row of the parquet with the daughter of H. B. Carmichael,
the third partner of a wholesale dry-goods house of that city.
Hurstwood did not see his son, for he sat, as was his wont, as
far back as possible, leaving himself just partially visible,
when he bent forward, to those within the first six rows in
question.  It was his wont to sit this way in every theatre--to
make his personality as inconspicuous as possible where it would
be no advantage to him to have it otherwise.

He never moved but what, if there was any danger of his conduct
being misconstrued or ill-reported, he looked carefully about him
and counted the cost of every inch of conspicuity.

The next morning at breakfast his son said:

"I saw you, Governor, last night."

"Were you at McVickar's?" said Hurstwood, with the best grace in
the world.

"Yes," said young George.

"Who with?"

"Miss Carmichael."

Mrs. Hurstwood directed an inquiring glance at her husband, but
could not judge from his appearance whether it was any more than
a casual look into the theatre which was referred to.

"How was the play?" she inquired.

"Very good," returned Hurstwood, "only it's the same old thing,
'Rip Van Winkle.'"

"Whom did you go with?" queried his wife, with assumed
indifference.

"Charlie Drouet and his wife.  They are friends of Moy's,
visiting here."

Owing to the peculiar nature of his position, such a disclosure
as this would ordinarily create no difficulty.  His wife took it
for granted that his situation called for certain social
movements in which she might not be included.  But of late he had
pleaded office duty on several occasions when his wife asked for
his company to any evening entertainment.  He had done so in
regard to the very evening in question only the morning before.

"I thought you were going to be busy," she remarked, very
carefully.

"So I was," he exclaimed.  "I couldn't help the interruption, but
I made up for it afterward by working until two."

This settled the discussion for the time being, but there was a
residue of opinion which was not satisfactory.  There was no time
at which the claims of his wife could have been more
unsatisfactorily pushed.  For years he had been steadily
modifying his matrimonial devotion, and found her company dull.
Now that a new light shone upon the horizon, this older luminary
paled in the west.  He was satisfied to turn his face away
entirely, and any call to look back was irksome.

She, on the contrary, was not at all inclined to accept anything
less than a complete fulfilment of the letter of their
relationship, though the spirit might be wanting.

"We are coming down town this afternoon," she remarked, a few
days later.  "I want you to come over to Kinsley's and meet Mr.
Phillips and his wife.  They're stopping at the Tremont, and
we're going to show them around a little."

After the occurrence of Wednesday, he could not refuse, though
the Phillips were about as uninteresting as vanity and ignorance
could make them.  He agreed, but it was with short grace.  He was
angry when he left the house.

"I'll put a stop to this," he thought.  "I'm not going to be
bothered fooling around with visitors when I have work to do."

Not long after this Mrs. Hurstwood came with a similar
proposition, only it was to a matinee this time.

"My dear," he returned, "I haven't time.  I'm too busy."

"You find time to go with other people, though," she replied,
with considerable irritation.

"Nothing of the kind," he answered.  "I can't avoid business
relations, and that's all there is to it."

"Well, never mind," she exclaimed.  Her lips tightened.  The
feeling of mutual antagonism was increased.

On the other hand, his interest in Drouet's little shop-girl grew
in an almost evenly balanced proportion.  That young lady, under
the stress of her situation and the tutelage of her new friend,
changed effectively.  She had the aptitude of the struggler who
seeks emancipation.  The glow of a more showy life was not lost
upon her.  She did not grow in knowledge so much as she awakened
in the matter of desire.  Mrs. Hale's extended harangues upon the
subjects of wealth and position taught her to distinguish between
degrees of wealth.
Mrs. Hale loved to drive in the afternoon in the sun when it was
fine, and to satisfy her soul with a sight of those mansions and
lawns which she could not afford.  On the North Side had been
erected a number of elegant mansions along what is now known as
the North Shore Drive.  The present lake wall of stone and
granitoid was not then in place, but the road had been well laid
out, the intermediate spaces of lawn were lovely to look upon,
and the houses were thoroughly new and imposing.  When the winter
season had passed and the first fine days of the early spring
appeared, Mrs. Hale secured a buggy for an afternoon and invited
Carrie.  They rode first through Lincoln Park and on far out
towards Evanston, turning back at four and arriving at the north
end of the Shore Drive at about five o'clock.  At this time of
year the days are still comparatively short, and the shadows of
the evening were beginning to settle down upon the great city.
Lamps were beginning to burn with that mellow radiance which
seems almost watery and translucent to the eye.  There was a
softness in the air which speaks with an infinite delicacy of
feeling to the flesh as well as to the soul.  Carrie felt that it
was a lovely day.  She was ripened by it in spirit for many
suggestions.  As they drove along the smooth pavement an
occasional carriage passed.  She saw one stop and the footman
dismount, opening the door for a gentleman who seemed to be
leisurely returning from some afternoon pleasure.  Across the
broad lawns, now first freshening into green, she saw lamps
faintly glowing upon rich interiors.  Now it was but a chair, now
a table, now an ornate corner, which met her eye, but it appealed
to her as almost nothing else could.  Such childish fancies as
she had had of fairy palaces and kingly quarters now came back.
She imagined that across these richly carved entrance-ways, where
the globed and crystalled lamps shone upon panelled doors set
with stained and designed panes of glass, was neither care nor
unsatisfied desire.  She was perfectly certain that here was
happiness.  If she could but stroll up yon broad walk, cross that
rich entrance-way, which to her was of the beauty of a jewel, and
sweep in grace and luxury to possession and command--oh! how
quickly would sadness flee; how, in an instant, would the
heartache end.  She gazed and gazed, wondering, delighting,
longing, and all the while the siren voice of the unrestful was
whispering in her ear.

"If we could have such a home as that," said Mrs. Hale sadly,
"how delightful it would be."

"And yet they do say," said Carrie, "that no one is ever happy."

She had heard so much of the canting philosophy of the grapeless
fox.

"I notice," said Mrs. Hale, "that they all try mighty hard,
though, to take their misery in a mansion."

When she came to her own rooms, Carrie saw their comparative
insignificance.  She was not so dull but that she could perceive
they were but three small rooms in a moderately well-furnished
boarding-house.  She was not contrasting it now with what she had
had, but what she had so recently seen.  The glow of the palatial
doors was still in her eye, the roll of cushioned carriages still
in her ears.  What, after all, was Drouet?  What was she?  At her
window, she thought it over, rocking to and fro, and gazing out
across the lamp-lit park toward the lamp-lit houses on Warren and
Ashland avenues.  She was too wrought up to care to go down to
eat, too pensive to do aught but rock and sing.  Some old tunes
crept to her lips, and, as she sang them, her heart sank.  She
longed and longed and longed.  It was now for the old cottage
room in Columbia City, now the mansion upon the Shore Drive, now
the fine dress of some lady, now the elegance of some scene.  She
was sad beyond measure, and yet uncertain, wishing, fancying.
Finally, it seemed as if all her state was one of loneliness and
forsakenness, and she could scarce refrain from trembling at the
lip.  She hummed and hummed as the moments went by, sitting in
the shadow by the window, and was therein as happy, though she
did not perceive it, as she ever would be.

While Carrie was still in this frame of mind, the house-servant
brought up the intelligence that Mr. Hurstwood was in the parlour
asking to see Mr. and Mrs. Drouet.

"I guess he doesn't know that Charlie is out of town," thought
Carrie.

She had seen comparatively little of the manager during the
winter, but had been kept constantly in mind of him by one thing
and another, principally by the strong impression he had made.
She was quite disturbed for the moment as to her appearance, but
soon satisfied herself by the aid of the mirror, and went below.

Hurstwood was in his best form, as usual.  He hadn't heard that
Drouet was out of town.  He was but slightly affected by the
intelligence, and devoted himself to the more general topics
which would interest Carrie.  It was surprising--the ease with
which he conducted a conversation.  He was like every man who has
had the advantage of practice and knows he has sympathy.  He knew
that Carrie listened to him pleasurably, and, without the least
effort, he fell into a train of observation which absorbed her
fancy.  He drew up his chair and modulated his voice to such a
degree that what he said seemed wholly confidential.  He confined
himself almost exclusively to his observation of men and
pleasures.  He had been here and there, he had seen this and
that.  Somehow he made Carrie wish to see similar things, and all
the while kept her aware of himself.  She could not shut out the
consciousness of his individuality and presence for a moment.  He
would raise his eyes slowly in smiling emphasis of something, and
she was fixed by their magnetism.  He would draw out, with the
easiest grace, her approval.  Once he touched her hand for
emphasis and she only smiled.  He seemed to radiate an atmosphere
which suffused her being.  He was never dull for a minute, and
seemed to make her clever.  At least, she brightened under his
influence until all her best side was exhibited.  She felt that
she was more clever with him than with others.  At least, he
seemed to find so much in her to applaud.  There was not the
slightest touch of patronage.  Drouet was full of it.

There had been something so personal, so subtle, in each meeting
between them, both when Drouet was present and when he was
absent, that Carrie could not speak of it without feeling a sense
of difficulty.  She was no talker.  She could never arrange her
thoughts in fluent order.  It was always a matter of feeling with
her, strong and deep.  Each time there had been no sentence of
importance which she could relate, and as for the glances and
sensations, what woman would reveal them? Such things had never
been between her and Drouet.  As a matter of fact, they could
never be.  She had been dominated by distress and the
enthusiastic forces of relief which Drouet represented at an
opportune moment when she yielded to him.  Now she was persuaded
by secret current feelings which Drouet had never understood.
Hurstwood's glance was as effective as the spoken words of a
lover, and more.  They called for no immediate decision, and
could not be answered.

People in general attach too much importance to words.  They are
under the illusion that talking effects great results.  As a
matter of fact, words are, as a rule, the shallowest portion of
all the argument.  They but dimly represent the great surging
feelings and desires which lie behind.  When the distraction of
the tongue is removed, the heart listens.

In this conversation she heard, instead of his words, the voices
of the things which he represented.  How suave was the counsel of
his appearance!  How feelingly did his superior state speak for
itself!  The growing desire he felt for her lay upon her spirit
as a gentle hand.  She did not need to tremble at all, because it
was invisible; she did not need to worry over what other people
would say--what she herself would say--because it had no
tangibility.  She was being pleaded with, persuaded, led into
denying old rights and assuming new ones, and yet there were no
words to prove it.  Such conversation as was indulged in held the
same relationship to the actual mental enactments of the twain
that the low music of the orchestra does to the dramatic incident
which it is used to cover.

"Have you ever seen the houses along the Lake Shore on the North
Side?" asked Hurstwood.

"Why, I was just over there this afternoon--Mrs. Hale and I.
Aren't they beautiful?"

"They're very fine," he answered.

"Oh, me," said Carrie, pensively.  "I wish I could live in such a
place."

"You're not happy," said Hurstwood, slowly, after a slight pause.

He had raised his eyes solemnly and was looking into her own.  He
assumed that he had struck a deep chord.  Now was a slight chance
to say a word in his own behalf.  He leaned over quietly and
continued his steady gaze.  He felt the critical character of the
period.  She endeavoured to stir, but it was useless.  The whole
strength of a man's nature was working.  He had good cause to
urge him on.  He looked and looked, and the longer the situation
lasted the more difficult it became.  The little shop-girl was
getting into deep water.  She was letting her few supports float
away from her.

"Oh," she said at last, "you mustn't look at me like that."

"I can't help it," he answered.

She relaxed a little and let the situation endure, giving him
strength.

"You are not satisfied with life, are you?"

"No," she answered, weakly.

He saw he was the master of the situation--he felt it.  He
reached over and touched her hand.

"You mustn't," she exclaimed, jumping up.

"I didn't intend to," he answered, easily.

She did not run away, as she might have done.  She did not
terminate the interview, but he drifted off into a pleasant field
of thought with the readiest grace.  Not long after he rose to
go, and she felt that he was in power.
"You mustn't feel bad," he said, kindly; "things will straighten
out in the course of time."

She made no answer, because she could think of nothing to say.

"We are good friends, aren't we?" he said, extending his hand.

"Yes," she answered.

"Not a word, then, until I see you again."

He retained a hold on her hand.

"I can't promise," she said, doubtfully.

"You must be more generous than that," he said, in such a simple
way that she was touched.

"Let's not talk about it any more," she returned.

"All right," he said, brightening.

He went down the steps and into his cab.  Carrie closed the door
and ascended into her room.  She undid her broad lace collar
before the mirror and unfastened her pretty alligator belt which
she had recently bought.

"I'm getting terrible," she said, honestly affected by a feeling
of trouble and shame.  "I don't seem to do anything right."

She unloosed her hair after a time, and let it hang in loose
brown waves.  Her mind was going over the events of the evening.

"I don't know," she murmured at last, "what I can do."

"Well," said Hurstwood as he rode away, "she likes me all right;
that I know."

The aroused manager whistled merrily for a good four miles to his
office an old melody that he had not recalled for fifteen years.

Chapter XVI

A WITLESS ALADDIN--THE GATE TO THE WORLD

In the course of his present stay in Chicago, Drouet paid some
slight attention to the secret order to which he belonged.
During his last trip he had received a new light on its
importance.

"I tell you," said another drummer to him, "it's a great thing.
Look at Hazenstab.  He isn't so deuced clever.  Of course he's
got a good house behind him, but that won't do alone.  I tell you
it's his degree.  He's a way-up Mason, and that goes a long way.
He's got a secret sign that stands for something."

Drouet resolved then and there that he would take more interest
in such matters.  So when he got back to Chicago he repaired to
his local lodge headquarters.

"I say, Drouet," said Mr. Harry Quincel, an individual who was
very prominent in this local branch of the Elks, "you're the man
that can help us out."

It was after the business meeting and things were going socially
with a hum.  Drouet was bobbing around chatting and joking with a
score of individuals whom he knew.

"What are you up to?" he inquired genially, turning a smiling
face upon his secret brother.

"We're trying to get up some theatricals for two weeks from to-
day, and we want to know if you don't know some young lady who
could take a part--it's an easy part."

"Sure," said Drouet, "what is it?" He did not trouble to remember
that he knew no one to whom he could appeal on this score.  His
innate good-nature, however, dictated a favourable reply.

"Well, now, I'll tell you what we are trying to do," went on Mr.
Quincel.  "We are trying to get a new set of furniture for the
lodge.  There isn't enough money in the treasury at the present
time, and we thought we would raise it by a little
entertainment."

"Sure," interrupted Drouet, "that's a good idea."

"Several of the boys around here have got talent.  There's Harry
Burbeck, he does a fine black-face turn.  Mac Lewis is all right
at heavy dramatics.  Did you ever hear him recite 'Over the
Hills'?"

"Never did."

"Well, I tell you, he does it fine."

"And you want me to get some woman to take a part?" questioned
Drouet, anxious to terminate the subject and get on to something
else.  "What are you going to play?"

"'Under the Gaslight,'" said Mr. Quincel, mentioning Augustin
Daly's famous production, which had worn from a great public
success down to an amateur theatrical favourite, with many of the
troublesome accessories cut out and the dramatis personae reduced
to the smallest possible number.

Drouet had seen this play some time in the past.

"That's it," he said; "that's a fine play.  It will go all right.
You ought to make a lot of money out of that."

"We think we'll do very well," Mr. Quincel replied.  "Don't you
forget now," he concluded, Drouet showing signs of restlessness;
"some young woman to take the part of Laura."

"Sure, I'll attend to it."

He moved away, forgetting almost all about it the moment Mr.
Quincel had ceased talking.  He had not even thought to ask the
time or place.

Drouet was reminded of his promise a day or two later by the
receipt of a letter announcing that the first rehearsal was set
for the following Friday evening, and urging him to kindly
forward the young lady's address at once, in order that the part
might be delivered to her.

"Now, who the deuce do I know?" asked the drummer reflectively,
scratching his rosy ear.  "I don't know any one that knows
anything about amateur theatricals."

He went over in memory the names of a number of women he knew,
and finally fixed on one, largely because of the convenient
location of her home on the West Side, and promised himself that
as he came out that evening he would see her.  When, however, he
started west on the car he forgot, and was only reminded of his
delinquency by an item in the "Evening News"--a small three-line
affair under the head of Secret Society Notes--which stated the
Custer Lodge of the Order of Elks would give a theatrical
performance in Avery Hall on the 16th, when "Under the Gaslight"
would be produced.

"George!" exclaimed Drouet, "I forgot that."

"What?" inquired Carrie.

They were at their little table in the room which might have been
used for a kitchen, where Carrie occasionally served a meal.  To-
night the fancy had caught her, and the little table was spread
with a pleasing repast.

"Why, my lodge entertainment.  They're going to give a play, and
they wanted me to get them some young lady to take a part."

"What is it they're going to play?"

"'Under the Gaslight.'"

"When?"

"On the 16th."

"Well, why don't you?" asked Carrie.

"I don't know any one," he replied.

Suddenly he looked up.

"Say," he said, "how would you like to take the part?"

"Me?" said Carrie.  "I can't act."

"How do you know?" questioned Drouet reflectively.

"Because," answered Carrie, "I never did."

Nevertheless, she was pleased to think he would ask.  Her eyes
brightened, for if there was anything that enlisted her
sympathies it was the art of the stage.
True to his nature, Drouet clung to this idea as an easy way out.

"That's nothing.  You can act all you have to down there."

"No, I can't," said Carrie weakly, very much drawn toward the
proposition and yet fearful.

"Yes, you can.  Now, why don't you do it? They need some one, and
it will be lots of fun for you."

"Oh, no, it won't," said Carrie seriously.

"You'd like that.  I know you would.  I've seen you dancing
around here and giving imitations and that's why I asked you.
You're clever enough, all right."

"No, I'm not," said Carrie shyly.

"Now, I'll tell you what you do.  You go down and see about it.
It'll be fun for you.  The rest of the company isn't going to be
any good.  They haven't any experience.  What do they know about
theatricals?"

He frowned as he thought of their ignorance.

"Hand me the coffee," he added.

"I don't believe I could act, Charlie," Carrie went on pettishly.
"You don't think I could, do you?"

"Sure.  Out o' sight.  I bet you make a hit.  Now you want to go,
I know you do.  I knew it when I came home.  That's why I asked
you."

"What is the play, did you say?"

"'Under the Gaslight.'"

"What part would they want me to take?"

"Oh, one of the heroines--I don't know."

"What sort of a play is it?"

"Well," said Drouet, whose memory for such things was not the
best, "it's about a girl who gets kidnapped by a couple of
crooks--a man and a woman that live in the slums.  She had some
money or something and they wanted to get it.  I don't know now
how it did go exactly."

"Don't you know what part I would have to take?"

"No, I don't, to tell the truth." He thought a moment.  "Yes, I
do, too.  Laura, that's the thing--you're to be Laura."

"And you can't remember what the part is like?"

"To save me, Cad, I can't," he answered.  "I ought to, too; I've
seen the play enough.  There's a girl in it that was stolen when
she was an infant--was picked off the street or something--and
she's the one that's hounded by the two old criminals I was
telling you about." He stopped with a mouthful of pie poised on a
fork before his face.  "She comes very near getting drowned--no,
that's not it.  I'll tell you what I'll do," he concluded
hopelessly, "I'll get you the book.  I can't remember now for the
life of me."

"Well, I don't know," said Carrie, when he had concluded, her
interest and desire to shine dramatically struggling with her
timidity for the mastery.  "I might go if you thought I'd do all
right."

"Of course, you'll do," said Drouet, who, in his efforts to
enthuse Carrie, had interested himself.  "Do you think I'd come
home here and urge you to do something that I didn't think you
would make a success of? You can act all right.  It'll be good
for you."

"When must I go?" said Carrie, reflectively.

"The first rehearsal is Friday night.  I'll get the part for you
to-night."

"All right," said Carrie resignedly, "I'll do it, but if I make a
failure now it's your fault."

"You won't fail," assured Drouet.  "Just act as you do around
here.  Be natural.  You're all right.  I've often thought you'd
make a corking good actress."

"Did you really?" asked Carrie.

"That's right," said the drummer.

He little knew as he went out of the door that night what a
secret flame he had kindled in the bosom of the girl he left
behind.  Carrie was possessed of that sympathetic, impressionable
nature which, ever in the most developed form, has been the glory
of the drama.  She was created with that passivity of soul which
is always the mirror of the active world.  She possessed an
innate taste for imitation and no small ability.  Even without
practice, she could sometimes restore dramatic situations she had
witnessed by re-creating, before her mirror, the expressions of
the various faces taking part in the scene.  She loved to
modulate her voice after the conventional manner of the
distressed heroine, and repeat such pathetic fragments as
appealed most to her sympathies.  Of late, seeing the airy grace
of the ingenue in several well-constructed plays, she had been
moved to secretly imitate it, and many were the little movements
and expressions of the body in which she indulged from time to
time in the privacy of her chamber.  On several occasions, when
Drouet had caught her admiring herself, as he imagined, in the
mirror, she was doing nothing more than recalling some little
grace of the mouth or the eyes which she had witnessed in
another.  Under his airy accusation she mistook this for vanity
and accepted the blame with a faint sense of error, though, as a
matter of fact, it was nothing more than the first subtle
outcroppings of an artistic nature, endeavouring to re-create the
perfect likeness of some phase of beauty which appealed to her.
In such feeble tendencies, be it known, such outworking of desire
to reproduce life, lies the basis of all dramatic art.

Now, when Carrie heard Drouet's laudatory opinion of her dramatic
ability, her body tingled with satisfaction.  Like the flame
which welds the loosened particles into a solid mass, his words
united those floating wisps of feeling which she had felt, but
never believed, concerning her possible ability, and made them
into a gaudy shred of hope.  Like all human beings, she had a
touch of vanity.  She felt that she could do things if she only
had a chance.  How often had she looked at the well-dressed
actresses on the stage and wondered how she would look, how
delightful she would feel if only she were in their place.  The
glamour, the tense situation, the fine clothes, the applause,
these had lured her until she felt that she, too, could act--that
she, too, could compel acknowledgment of power.  Now she was told
that she really could--that little things she had done about the
house had made even him feel her power.  It was a delightful
sensation while it lasted.

When Drouet was gone, she sat down in her rocking-chair by the
window to think about it.  As usual, imagination exaggerated the
possibilities for her.  It was as if he had put fifty cents in
her hand and she had exercised the thoughts of a thousand
dollars.  She saw herself in a score of pathetic situations in
which she assumed a tremulous voice and suffering manner.  Her
mind delighted itself with scenes of luxury and refinement,
situations in which she was the cynosure of all eyes, the arbiter
of all fates.  As she rocked to and fro she felt the tensity of
woe in abandonment, the magnificence of wrath after deception,
the languour of sorrow after defeat.  Thoughts of all the
charming women she had seen in plays--every fancy, every illusion
which she had concerning the stage--now came back as a returning
tide after the ebb.  She built up feelings and a determination
which the occasion did not warrant.

Drouet dropped in at the lodge when he went down town, and
swashed around with a great AIR, as Quincel met him.

"Where is that young lady you were going to get for us?" asked
the latter.

"I've got her," said Drouet.

"Have you?" said Quincel, rather surprised by his promptness;
"that's good.  What's her address?" and he pulled out his
notebook in order to be able to send her part to her.

"You want to send her her part?" asked the drummer.

"Yes."

"Well, I'll take it.  I'm going right by her house in the
morning.

"What did you say her address was? We only want it in case we
have any information to send her."

"Twenty-nine Ogden Place."

"And her name?"

"Carrie Madenda," said the drummer, firing at random.  The lodge
members knew him to be single.

"That sounds like somebody that can act, doesn't it?" said
Quincel.

"Yes, it does."

He took the part home to Carrie and handed it to her with the
manner of one who does a favour.

"He says that's the best part.  Do you think you can do it?"

"I don't know until I look it over.  You know I'm afraid, now
that I've said I would."

"Oh, go on.  What have you got to be afraid of? It's a cheap
company.  The rest of them aren't as good as you are."

"Well, I'll see," said Carrie, pleased to have the part, for all
her misgivings.

He sidled around, dressing and fidgeting before he arranged to
make his next remark.

"They were getting ready to print the programmes," he said, "and
I gave them the name of Carrie Madenda.  Was that all right?"

"Yes, I guess so," said his companion, looking up at him.  She
was thinking it was slightly strange.

"If you didn't make a hit, you know," he went on.

"Oh, yes," she answered, rather pleased now with his caution.  It
was clever for Drouet.

"I didn't want to introduce you as my wife, because you'd feel
worse then if you didn't GO.  They all know me so well.  But
you'll GO all right.  Anyhow, you'll probably never meet any of
them again."

"Oh, I don't care," said Carrie desperately.  She was determined
now to have a try at the fascinating game.

Drouet breathed a sigh of relief.  He had been afraid that he was
about to precipitate another conversation upon the marriage
question.

The part of Laura, as Carrie found out when she began to examine
it, was one of suffering and tears.  As delineated by Mr. Daly,
it was true to the most sacred traditions of melodrama as he
found it when he began his career.  The sorrowful demeanour, the
tremolo music, the long, explanatory, cumulative addresses, all
were there.

"Poor fellow," read Carrie, consulting the text and drawing her
voice out pathetically.  "Martin, be sure and give him a glass of
wine before he goes."

She was surprised at the briefness of the entire part, not
knowing that she must be on the stage while others were talking,
and not only be there, but also keep herself in harmony with the
dramatic movement of the scenes.

"I think I can do that, though," she concluded.

When Drouet came the next night, she was very much satisfied with
her day's study.

"Well, how goes it, Caddie?" he said.

"All right," she laughed.  "I think I have it memorised nearly."

"That's good," he said.  "Let's hear some of it."

"Oh, I don't know whether I can get up and say it off here," she
said bashfully.

"Well, I don't know why you shouldn't.  It'll be easier here than
it will there."

"I don't know about that," she answered.
Eventually she took off the ballroom episode with considerable
feeling, forgetting, as she got deeper in the scene, all about
Drouet, and letting herself rise to a fine state of feeling.

"Good," said Drouet; "fine, out o' sight! You're all right
Caddie, I tell you."

He was really moved by her excellent representation and the
general appearance of the pathetic little figure as it swayed and
finally fainted to the floor.  He had bounded up to catch her,
and now held her laughing in his arms.

"Ain't you afraid you'll hurt yourself?" he asked.

"Not a bit."

"Well, you're a wonder.  Say, I never knew you could do anything
like that."

"I never did, either," said Carrie merrily, her face flushed with
delight.

"Well, you can bet that you're all right," said Drouet.  "You can
take my word for that.  You won't fail."

Chapter XVII

A GLIMPSE THROUGH THE GATEWAY--HOPE LIGHTENS THE EYE

The, to Carrie, very important theatrical performance was to take
place at the Avery on conditions which were to make it more
noteworthy than was at first anticipated.  The little dramatic
student had written to Hurstwood the very morning her part was
brought her that she was going to take part in a play.

"I really am," she wrote, feeling that he might take it as a
jest; "I have my part now, honest, truly."

Hurstwood smiled in an indulgent way as he read this.

"I wonder what it is going to be? I must see that."

He answered at once, making a pleasant reference to her ability.
"I haven't the slightest doubt you will make a success.  You must
come to the park to-morrow morning and tell me all about it."

Carrie gladly complied, and revealed all the details of the
undertaking as she understood it.

"Well," he said, "that's fine.  I'm glad to hear it.  Of course,
you will do well, you're so clever."

He had truly never seen so much spirit in the girl before.  Her
tendency to discover a touch of sadness had for the nonce
disappeared.  As she spoke her eyes were bright, her cheeks red.
She radiated much of the pleasure which her undertakings gave
her.  For all her misgivings--and they were as plentiful as the
moments of the day--she was still happy.  She could not repress
her delight in doing this little thing which, to an ordinary
observer, had no importance at all.

Hurstwood was charmed by the development of the fact that the
girl had capabilities.  There is nothing so inspiring in life as
the sight of a legitimate ambition, no matter how incipient.  It
gives colour, force, and beauty to the possessor.

Carrie was now lightened by a touch of this divine afflatus.  She
drew to herself commendation from her two admirers which she had
not earned.  Their affection for her naturally heightened their
perception of what she was trying to do and their approval of
what she did.  Her inexperience conserved her own exuberant
fancy, which ran riot with every straw of opportunity, making of
it a golden divining rod whereby the treasure of life was to be
discovered.

"Let's see," said Hurstwood, "I ought to know some of the boys in
the lodge.  I'm an Elk myself."

"Oh, you mustn't let him know I told you."

"That's so," said the manager.

"I'd like for you to be there, if you want to come, but I don't
see how you can unless he asks you."

"I'll be there," said Hurstwood affectionately.  "I can fix it so
he won't know you told me.  You leave it to me."

This interest of the manager was a large thing in itself for the
performance, for his standing among the Elks was something worth
talking about.  Already he was thinking of a box with some
friends, and flowers for Carrie.  He would make it a dress-suit
affair and give the little girl a chance.

Within a day or two, Drouet dropped into the Adams Street resort,
and he was at once spied by Hurstwood.  It was at five in the
afternoon and the place was crowded with merchants, actors,
managers, politicians, a goodly company of rotund, rosy figures,
silk-hatted, starchy-bosomed, beringed and bescarfpinned to the
queen's taste.  John L. Sullivan, the pugilist, was at one end of
the glittering bar, surrounded by a company of loudly dressed
sports, who were holding a most animated conversation.  Drouet
came across the floor with a festive stride, a new pair of tan
shoes squeaking audibly at his progress.

"Well, sir," said Hurstwood, "I was wondering what had become of
you.  I thought you had gone out of town again."

Drouet laughed.

"If you don't report more regularly we'll have to cut you off the
list."

"Couldn't help it," said the drummer, "I've been busy."

They strolled over toward the bar amid the noisy, shifting
company of notables.  The dressy manager was shaken by the hand
three times in as many minutes.

"I hear your lodge is going to give a performance," observed
Hurstwood, in the most offhand manner.

"Yes, who told you?"

"No one," said Hurstwood.  "They just sent me a couple of
tickets, which I can have for two dollars.  Is it going to be any
good?"

"I don't know," replied the drummer.  "They've been trying to get
me to get some woman to take a part."

"I wasn't intending to go," said the manager easily.  "I'll
subscribe, of course.  How are things over there?"

"All right.  They're going to fit things up out of the proceeds."

"Well," said the manager, "I hope they make a success of it.
Have another?"

He did not intend to say any more.  Now, if he should appear on
the scene with a few friends, he could say that he had been urged
to come along.  Drouet had a desire to wipe out the possibility
of confusion.

"I think the girl is going to take a part in it," he said
abruptly, after thinking it over.

"You don't say so! How did that happen?"

"Well, they were short and wanted me to find them some one.  I
told Carrie, and she seems to want to try."

"Good for her," said the manager.  "It'll be a real nice affair.
Do her good, too.  Has she ever had any experience?"

"Not a bit."

"Oh, well, it isn't anything very serious."

"She's clever, though," said Drouet, casting off any imputation
against Carrie's ability.  "She picks up her part quick enough."

"You don't say so!" said the manager.

"Yes, sir; she surprised me the other night.  By George, if she
didn't."

"We must give her a nice little send-off," said the manager.
"I'll look after the flowers."

Drouet smiled at his good-nature.

"After the show you must come with me and we'll have a little
supper."

"I think she'll do all right," said Drouet.

"I want to see her.  She's got to do all right.  We'll make her,"
and the manager gave one of his quick, steely half-smiles, which
was a compound of good-nature and shrewdness.

Carrie, meanwhile, attended the first rehearsal.  At this
performance Mr. Quincel presided, aided by Mr. Millice, a young
man who had some qualifications of past experience, which were
not exactly understood by any one.  He was so experienced and so
business-like, however, that he came very near being rude--
failing to remember, as he did, that the individuals he was
trying to instruct were volunteer players and not salaried
underlings.

"Now, Miss Madenda," he said, addressing Carrie, who stood in one
part uncertain as to what move to make, "you don't want to stand
like that.  Put expression in your face.  Remember, you are
troubled over the intrusion of the stranger.  Walk so," and he
struck out across the Avery stage in almost drooping manner.

Carrie did not exactly fancy the suggestion, but the novelty of
the situation, the presence of strangers, all more or less
nervous, and the desire to do anything rather than make a
failure, made her timid.  She walked in imitation of her mentor
as requested, inwardly feeling that there was something strangely
lacking.

"Now, Mrs. Morgan," said the director to one young married woman
who was to take the part of Pearl, "you sit here.  Now, Mr.
Bamberger, you stand here, so.  Now, what is it you say?"

"Explain," said Mr. Bamberger feebly.  He had the part of Ray,
Laura's lover, the society individual who was to waver in his
thoughts of marrying her, upon finding that she was a waif and a
nobody by birth.

"How is that--what does your text say?"

"Explain," repeated Mr. Bamberger, looking intently at his part.

"Yes, but it also says," the director remarked, "that you are to
look shocked.  Now, say it again, and see if you can't look
shocked."

"Explain!" demanded Mr. Bamberger vigorously.

"No, no, that won't do! Say it this way--EXPLAIN."

"Explain," said Mr. Bamberger, giving a modified imitation.

"That's better.  Now go on."

"One night," resumed Mrs. Morgan, whose lines came next, "father
and mother were going to the opera.  When they were crossing
Broadway, the usual crowd of children accosted them for alms--"

"Hold on," said the director, rushing forward, his arm extended.
"Put more feeling into what you are saying."

Mrs. Morgan looked at him as if she feared a personal assault.
Her eye lightened with resentment.

"Remember, Mrs. Morgan," he added, ignoring the gleam, but
modifying his manner, "that you're detailing a pathetic story.
You are now supposed to be telling something that is a grief to
you.  It requires feeling, repression, thus: 'The usual crowd of
children accosted them for alms.'"

"All right," said Mrs. Morgan.

"Now, go on."

"As mother felt in her pocket for some change, her fingers
touched a cold and trembling hand which had clutched her purse."

"Very good," interrupted the director, nodding his head
significantly.

"A pickpocket! Well!" exclaimed Mr. Bamberger, speaking the lines
that here fell to him.

"No, no, Mr. Bamberger," said the director, approaching, "not
that way.  'A pickpocket--well?' so.  That's the idea."

"Don't you think," said Carrie weakly, noticing that it had not
been proved yet whether the members of the company knew their
lines, let alone the details of expression, "that it would be
better if we just went through our lines once to see if we know
them? We might pick up some points."

"A very good idea, Miss Madenda," said Mr. Quincel, who sat at
the side of the stage, looking serenely on and volunteering
opinions which the director did not heed.

"All right," said the latter, somewhat abashed, "it might be well
to do it." Then brightening, with a show of authority, "Suppose
we run right through, putting in as much expression as we can."

"Good," said Mr. Quincel.

"This hand," resumed Mrs. Morgan, glancing up at Mr. Bamberger
and down at her book, as the lines proceeded, "my mother grasped
in her own, and so tight that a small, feeble voice uttered an
exclamation of pain.  Mother looked down, and there beside her
was a little ragged girl."

"Very good," observed the director, now hopelessly idle.

"The thief!" exclaimed Mr. Bamberger.

"Louder," put in the director, finding it almost impossible to
keep his hands off.

"The thief!" roared poor Bamberger.

"Yes, but a thief hardly six years old, with a face like an
angel's.  'Stop,' said my mother.  'What are you doing?'

"'Trying to steal,' said the child.

"'Don't you know that it is wicked to do so?' asked my father.

"'No,' said the girl, 'but it is dreadful to be hungry.'

"'Who told you to steal?' asked my mother.

"'She--there,' said the child, pointing to a squalid woman in a
doorway opposite, who fled suddenly down the street.  'That is
old Judas,' said the girl."

Mrs. Morgan read this rather flatly, and the director was in
despair.  He fidgeted around, and then went over to Mr. Quincel.

"What do you think of them?" he asked.

"Oh, I guess we'll be able to whip them into shape," said the
latter, with an air of strength under difficulties.

"I don't know," said the director.  "That fellow Bamberger
strikes me as being a pretty poor shift for a lover."

"He's all we've got," said Quincel, rolling up his eyes.
"Harrison went back on me at the last minute.  Who else can we
get?"

"I don't know," said the director.  "I'm afraid he'll never pick
up."

At this moment Bamberger was exclaiming, "Pearl, you are joking
with me."
"Look at that now," said the director, whispering behind his
hand.  "My Lord! what can you do with a man who drawls out a
sentence like that?"

"Do the best you can," said Quincel consolingly.

The rendition ran on in this wise until it came to where Carrie,
as Laura, comes into the room to explain to Ray, who, after
hearing Pearl's statement about her birth, had written the letter
repudiating her, which, however, he did not deliver.  Bamberger
was just concluding the words of Ray, "I must go before she
returns.  Her step! Too late," and was cramming the letter in his
pocket, when she began sweetly with:

"Ray!"

"Miss--Miss Courtland," Bamberger faltered weakly.

Carrie looked at him a moment and forgot all about the company
present.  She began to feel the part, and summoned an indifferent
smile to her lips, turning as the lines directed and going to a
window, as if he were not present.  She did it with a grace which
was fascinating to look upon.

"Who is that woman?" asked the director, watching Carrie in her
little scene with Bamberger.

"Miss Madenda," said Quincel.

"I know her name," said the director, "but what does she do?"

"I don't know," said Quincel.  "She's a friend of one of our
members."

"Well, she's got more gumption than any one I've seen here so
far--seems to take an interest in what she's doing."

"Pretty, too, isn't she?" said Quincel.

The director strolled away without answering.

In the second scene, where she was supposed to face the company
in the ball-room, she did even better, winning the smile of the
director, who volunteered, because of her fascination for him, to
come over and speak with her.

"Were you ever on the stage?" he asked insinuatingly.

"No," said Carrie.

"You do so well, I thought you might have had some experience."

Carrie only smiled consciously.

He walked away to listen to Bamberger, who was feebly spouting
some ardent line.

Mrs. Morgan saw the drift of things and gleamed at Carrie with
envious and snapping black eyes.

"She's some cheap professional," she gave herself the
satisfaction of thinking, and scorned and hated her accordingly.

The rehearsal ended for one day, and Carrie went home feeling
that she had acquitted herself satisfactorily.  The words of the
director were ringing in her ears, and she longed for an
opportunity to tell Hurstwood.  She wanted him to know just how
well she was doing.  Drouet, too, was an object for her
confidences.  She could hardly wait until he should ask her, and
yet she did not have the vanity to bring it up.  The drummer,
however, had another line of thought to-night, and her little
experience did not appeal to him as important.  He let the
conversation drop, save for what she chose to recite without
solicitation, and Carrie was not good at that.  He took it for
granted that she was doing very well and he was relieved of
further worry.  Consequently he threw Carrie into repression,
which was irritating.  She felt his indifference keenly and
longed to see Hurstwood.  It was as if he were now the only
friend she had on earth.  The next morning Drouet was interested
again, but the damage had been done.

She got a pretty letter from the manager, saying that by the time
she got it he would be waiting for her in the park.  When she
came, he shone upon her as the morning sun.

"Well, my dear," he asked, "how did you come out?"

"Well enough," she said, still somewhat reduced after Drouet.

"Now, tell me just what you did.  Was it pleasant?"

Carrie related the incidents of the rehearsal, warming up as she
proceeded.

"Well, that's delightful," said Hurstwood.  "I'm so glad.  I must
get over there to see you.  When is the next rehearsal?"

"Tuesday," said Carrie, "but they don't allow visitors."

"I imagine I could get in," said Hurstwood significantly.

She was completely restored and delighted by his consideration,
but she made him promise not to come around.

"Now, you must do your best to please me," he said encouragingly.
"Just remember that I want you to succeed.  We will make the
performance worth while.  You do that now."

"I'll try," said Carrie, brimming with affection and enthusiasm.

"That's the girl," said Hurstwood fondly.  "Now, remember,"
shaking an affectionate finger at her, "your best."

"I will," she answered, looking back.

The whole earth was brimming sunshine that morning.  She tripped
along, the clear sky pouring liquid blue into her soul.  Oh,
blessed are the children of endeavour in this, that they try and
are hopeful.  And blessed also are they who, knowing, smile and
approve.

Chapter XVIII

JUST OVER THE BORDER--A HAIL AND FAREWELL

By the evening of the 16th the subtle hand of Hurstwood had made
itself apparent.  He had given the word among his friends--and
they were many and influential--that here was something which
they ought to attend, and, as a consequence, the sale of tickets
by Mr. Quincel, acting for the lodge, had been large.  Small
four-line notes had appeared in all of the daily newspapers.
These he had arranged for by the aid of one of his newspaper
friends on the "Times," Mr. Harry McGarren, the managing editor.

"Say, Harry," Hurstwood said to him one evening, as the latter
stood at the bar drinking before wending his belated way
homeward, "you can help the boys out, I guess."

"What is it?" said McGarren, pleased to be consulted by the
opulent manager.

"The Custer Lodge is getting up a little entertainment for their
own good, and they'd like a little newspaper notice.  You know
what I mean--a squib or two saying that it's going to take
place."

"Certainly," said McGarren, "I can fix that for you, George."

At the same time Hurstwood kept himself wholly in the background.
The members of Custer Lodge could scarcely understand why their
little affair was taking so well.  Mr. Harry Quincel was looked
upon as quite a star for this sort of work.

By the time the 16th had arrived Hurstwood's friends had rallied
like Romans to a senator's call.  A well-dressed, good-natured,
flatteringly-inclined audience was assured from the moment he
thought of assisting Carrie.

That little student had mastered her part to her own
satisfaction, much as she trembled for her fate when she should
once face the gathered throng, behind the glare of the
footlights.  She tried to console herself with the thought that a
score of other persons, men and women, were equally tremulous
concerning the outcome of their efforts, but she could not
disassociate the general danger from her own individual
liability.  She feared that she would forget her lines, that she
might be unable to master the feeling which she now felt
concerning her own movements in the play.  At times she wished
that she had never gone into the affair; at others, she trembled
lest she should be paralysed with fear and stand white and
gasping, not knowing what to say and spoiling the entire
performance.

In the matter of the company, Mr. Bamberger had disappeared.
That hopeless example had fallen under the lance of the
director's criticism.  Mrs. Morgan was still present, but envious
and determined, if for nothing more than spite, to do as well as
Carrie at least.  A loafing professional had been called in to
assume the role of Ray, and, while he was a poor stick of his
kind, he was not troubled by any of those qualms which attack the
spirit of those who have never faced an audience.  He swashed
about (cautioned though he was to maintain silence concerning his
past theatrical relationships) in such a self-confident manner
that he was like to convince every one of his identity by mere
matter of circumstantial evidence.

"It is so easy," he said to Mrs. Morgan, in the usual affected
stage voice.  "An audience would be the last thing to trouble me.
It's the spirit of the part, you know, that is difficult."

Carrie disliked his appearance, but she was too much the actress
not to swallow his qualities with complaisance, seeing that she
must suffer his fictitious love for the evening.

At six she was ready to go.  Theatrical paraphernalia had been
provided over and above her care.  She had practised her make-up
in the morning, had rehearsed and arranged her material for the
evening by one o'clock, and had gone home to have a final look at
her part, waiting for the evening to come.

On this occasion the lodge sent a carriage.  Drouet rode with her
as far as the door, and then went about the neighbouring stores,
looking for some good cigars.  The little actress marched
nervously into her dressing-room and began that painfully
anticipated matter of make-up which was to transform her, a
simple maiden, to Laura, The Belle of Society.

The flare of the gas-jets, the open trunks, suggestive of travel
and display, the scattered contents of the make-up box--rouge,
pearl powder, whiting, burnt cork, India ink, pencils for the
eye-lids, wigs, scissors, looking-glasses, drapery--in short, all
the nameless paraphernalia of disguise, have a remarkable
atmosphere of their own.  Since her arrival in the city many
things had influenced her, but always in a far-removed manner.
This new atmosphere was more friendly.  It was wholly unlike the
great brilliant mansions which waved her coldly away, permitting
her only awe and distant wonder.  This took her by the hand
kindly, as one who says, "My dear, come in." It opened for her as
if for its own.  She had wondered at the greatness of the names
upon the bill-boards, the marvel of the long notices in the
papers, the beauty of the dresses upon the stage, the atmosphere
of carriages, flowers, refinement.  Here was no illusion.  Here
was an open door to see all of that.  She had come upon it as one
who stumbles upon a secret passage and, behold, she was in the
chamber of diamonds and delight!

As she dressed with a flutter, in her little stage room, hearing
the voices outside, seeing Mr. Quincel hurrying here and there,
noting Mrs. Morgan and Mrs. Hoagland at their nervous work of
preparation, seeing all the twenty members of the cast moving
about and worrying over what the result would be, she could not
help thinking what a delight this would be if it would endure;
how perfect a state, if she could only do well now, and then some
time get a place as a real actress.  The thought had taken a
mighty hold upon her.  It hummed in her ears as the melody of an
old song.

Outside in the little lobby another scene was begin enacted.
Without the interest of Hurstwood, the little hall would probably
have been comfortably filled, for the members of the lodge were
moderately interested in its welfare.  Hurstwood's word, however,
had gone the rounds.  It was to be a full-dress affair.  The four
boxes had been taken.  Dr. Norman McNeill Hale and his wife were
to occupy one.  This was quite a card.  C. R. Walker, dry-goods
merchant and possessor of at least two hundred thousand dollars,
had taken another; a well-known coal merchant had been induced to
take the third, and Hurstwood and his friends the fourth.  Among
the latter was Drouet.  The people who were now pouring here were
not celebrities, nor even local notabilities, in a general sense.
They were the lights of a certain circle--the circle of small
fortunes and secret order distinctions.  These gentlemen Elks
knew the standing of one another.  They had regard for the
ability which could amass a small fortune, own a nice home, keep
a barouche or carriage, perhaps, wear fine clothes, and maintain
a good mercantile position.  Naturally, Hurstwood, who was a
little above the order of mind which accepted this standard as
perfect, who had shrewdness and much assumption of dignity, who
held an imposing and authoritative position, and commanded
friendship by intuitive tact in handling people, was quite a
figure.  He was more generally known than most others in the same
circle, and was looked upon as some one whose reserve covered a
mine of influence and solid financial prosperity.

To-night he was in his element.  He came with several friends
directly from Rector's in a carriage.  In the lobby he met
Drouet, who was just returning from a trip for more cigars.  All
five now joined in an animated conversation concerning the
company present and the general drift of lodge affairs.

"Who's here?" said Hurstwood, passing into the theatre proper,
where the lights were turned up and a company of gentlemen were
laughing and talking in the open space back of the seats.

"Why, how do you do, Mr. Hurstwood?" came from the first
individual recognised.

"Glad to see you," said the latter, grasping his hand lightly.

"Looks quite an affair, doesn't it?"

"Yes, indeed," said the manager.

"Custer seems to have the backing of its members," observed the
friend.

"So it should," said the knowing manager.  "I'm glad to see it."

"Well, George," said another rotund citizen, whose avoirdupois
made necessary an almost alarming display of starched shirt
bosom, "how goes it with you?"

"Excellent," said the manager.

"What brings you over here? You're not a member of Custer."

"Good-nature," returned the manager.  "Like to see the boys, you
know."

"Wife here?"

"She couldn't come to-night.  She's not well."

"Sorry to hear it--nothing serious, I hope."

"No, just feeling a little ill."

"I remember Mrs.  Hurstwood when she was travelling once with you
over to St. Joe--" and here the newcomer launched off in a
trivial recollection, which was terminated by the arrival of more
friends.

"Why, George, how are you?" said another genial West Side
politician and lodge member.  "My, but I'm glad to see you again;
how are things, anyhow?"

"Very well; I see you got that nomination for alderman."

"Yes, we whipped them out over there without much trouble."

"What do you suppose Hennessy will do now?"

"Oh, he'll go back to his brick business.  He has a brick-yard,
you know."

"I didn't know that," said the manager.  "Felt pretty sore, I
suppose, over his defeat."
"Perhaps," said the other, winking shrewdly.

Some of the more favoured of his friends whom he had invited
began to roll up in carriages now.  They came shuffling in with a
great show of finery and much evident feeling of content and
importance.

"Here we are," said Hurstwood, turning to one from a group with
whom he was talking.

"That's right," returned the newcomer, a gentleman of about
forty-five.

"And say," he whispered, jovially, pulling Hurstwood over by the
shoulder so that he might whisper in his ear, "if this isn't a
good show, I'll punch your head."

"You ought to pay for seeing your old friends.  Bother the show!"

To another who inquired, "Is it something really good?" the
manager replied:

"I don't know.  I don't suppose so." Then, lifting his hand
graciously, "For the lodge."

"Lots of boys out, eh?"

"Yes, look up Shanahan.  He was just asking for you a moment
ago."

It was thus that the little theatre resounded to a babble of
successful voices, the creak of fine clothes, the commonplace of
good-nature, and all largely because of this man's bidding.  Look
at him any time within the half hour before the curtain was up,
he was a member of an eminent group--a rounded company of five or
more whose stout figures, large white bosoms, and shining pins
bespoke the character of their success.  The gentlemen who
brought their wives called him out to shake hands.  Seats
clicked, ushers bowed while he looked blandly on.  He was
evidently a light among them, reflecting in his personality the
ambitions of those who greeted him.  He was acknowledged, fawned
upon, in a way lionised.  Through it all one could see the
standing of the man.  It was greatness in a way, small as it was.

Chapter XXII

THE BLAZE OF THE TINDER--FLESH WARS WITH THE FLESH

The misfortune of the Hurstwood household was due to the fact
that jealousy, having been born of love, did not perish with it.
Mrs. Hurstwood retained this in such form that subsequent
influences could transform it into hate.  Hurstwood was still
worthy, in a physical sense, of the affection his wife had once
bestowed upon him, but in a social sense he fell short.  With his
regard died his power to be attentive to her, and this, to a
woman, is much greater than outright crime toward another.  Our
self-love dictates our appreciation of the good or evil in
another.  In Mrs. Hurstwood it discoloured the very hue of her
husband's indifferent nature.  She saw design in deeds and
phrases which sprung only from a faded appreciation of her
presence.

As a consequence, she was resentful and suspicious.  The jealousy
that prompted her to observe every falling away from the little
amenities of the married relation on his part served to give her
notice of the airy grace with which he still took the world.  She
could see from the scrupulous care which he exercised in the
matter of his personal appearance that his interest in life had
abated not a jot.  Every motion, every glance had something in it
of the pleasure he felt in Carrie, of the zest this new pursuit
of pleasure lent to his days.  Mrs. Hurstwood felt something,
sniffing change, as animals do danger, afar off.

This feeling was strengthened by actions of a direct and more
potent nature on the part of Hurstwood.  We have seen with what
irritation he shirked those little duties which no longer
contained any amusement of satisfaction for him, and the open
snarls with which, more recently, he resented her irritating
goads.  These little rows were really precipitated by an
atmosphere which was surcharged with dissension.  That it would
shower, with a sky so full of blackening thunderclouds, would
scarcely be thought worthy of comment.  Thus, after leaving the
breakfast table this morning, raging inwardly at his blank
declaration of indifference at her plans, Mrs. Hurstwood
encountered Jessica in her dressing-room, very leisurely
arranging her hair.  Hurstwood had already left the house.

"I wish you wouldn't be so late coming down to breakfast," she
said, addressing Jessica, while making for her crochet basket.
"Now here the things are quite cold, and you haven't eaten."

Her natural composure was sadly ruffled, and Jessica was doomed
to feel the fag end of the storm.

"I'm not hungry," she answered.

"Then why don't you say so, and let the girl put away the things,
instead of keeping her waiting all morning?"

"She doesn't mind," answered Jessica, coolly.

"Well, I do, if she doesn't," returned the mother, "and, anyhow,
I don't like you to talk that way to me.  You're too young to put
on such an air with your mother."

"Oh, mamma, don't row,"; answered Jessica.  "What's the matter
this morning, anyway?"

"Nothing's the matter, and I'm not rowing.  You mustn't think
because I indulge you in some things that you can keep everybody
waiting.  I won't have it."

"I'm not keeping anybody waiting," returned Jessica, sharply,
stirred out of a cynical indifference to a sharp defence.  "I
said I wasn't hungry.  I don't want any breakfast."

"Mind how you address me, missy.  I'll not have it.  Hear me now;
I'll not have it!"

Jessica heard this last while walking out of the room, with a
toss of her head and a flick of her pretty skirts indicative of
the independence and indifference she felt.  She did not propose
to be quarrelled with.

Such little arguments were all too frequent, the result of a
growth of natures which were largely independent and selfish.
George, Jr., manifested even greater touchiness and exaggeration
in the matter of his individual rights, and attempted to make all
feel that he was a man with a man's privileges--an assumption
which, of all things, is most groundless and pointless in a youth
of nineteen.

Hurstwood was a man of authority and some fine feeling, and it
irritated him excessively to find himself surrounded more and
more by a world upon which he had no hold, and of which he had a
lessening understanding.

Now, when such little things, such as the proposed earlier start
to Waukesha, came up, they made clear to him his position.  He
was being made to follow, was not leading.  When, in addition, a
sharp temper was manifested, and to the process of shouldering
him out of his authority was added a rousing intellectual kick,
such as a sneer or a cynical laugh, he was unable to keep his
temper.  He flew into hardly repressed passion, and wished
himself clear of the whole household.  It seemed a most
irritating drag upon all his desires and opportunities.

For all this, he still retained the semblance of leadership and
control, even though his wife was straining to revolt.  Her
display of temper and open assertion of opposition were based
upon nothing more than the feeling that she could do it.  She had
no special evidence wherewith to justify herself--the knowledge
of something which would give her both authority and excuse.  The
latter was all that was lacking, however, to give a solid
foundation to what, in a way, seemed groundless discontent.  The
clear proof of one overt deed was the cold breath needed to
convert the lowering clouds of suspicion into a rain of wrath.

An inkling of untoward deeds on the part of Hurstwood had come.
Doctor Beale, the handsome resident physician of the
neighbourhood, met Mrs. Hurstwood at her own doorstep some days
after Hurstwood and Carrie had taken the drive west on Washington
Boulevard.  Dr. Beale, coming east on the same drive, had
recognised Hurstwood, but not before he was quite past him.  He
was not so sure of Carrie--did not know whether it was
Hurstwood's wife or daughter.

"You don't speak to your friends when you meet them out driving,
do you?" he said, jocosely, to Mrs. Hurstwood.

"If I see them, I do.  Where was I?"

"On Washington Boulevard." he answered, expecting her eye to
light with immediate remembrance.

She shook her head.

"Yes, out near Hoyne Avenue.  You were with your husband."

"I guess you're mistaken," she answered.  Then, remembering her
husband's part in the affair, she immediately fell a prey to a
host of young suspicions, of which, however, she gave no sign.

"I know I saw your husband," he went on.  "I wasn't so sure about
you.  Perhaps it was your daughter."

"Perhaps it was," said Mrs. Hurstwood, knowing full well that
such was not the case, as Jessica had been her companion for
weeks.  She had recovered herself sufficiently to wish to know
more of the details.

"Was it in the afternoon?" she asked, artfully, assuming an air
of acquaintanceship with the matter.

"Yes, about two or three."

"It must have been Jessica," said Mrs. Hurstwood, not wishing to
seem to attach any importance to the incident.

The physician had a thought or two of his own, but dismissed the
matter as worthy of no further discussion on his part at least.

Mrs. Hurstwood gave this bit of information considerable thought
during the next few hours, and even days.  She took it for
granted that the doctor had really seen her husband, and that he
had been riding, most likely, with some other woman, after
announcing himself as BUSY to her.  As a consequence, she
recalled, with rising feeling, how often he had refused to go to
places with her, to share in little visits, or, indeed, take part
in any of the social amenities which furnished the diversion of
her existence.  He had been seen at the theatre with people whom
he called Moy's friends; now he was seen driving, and, most
likely, would have an excuse for that.  Perhaps there were others
of whom she did not hear, or why should he be so busy, so
indifferent, of late? In the last six weeks he had become
strangely irritable--strangely satisfied to pick up and go out,
whether things were right or wrong in the house.  Why?

She recalled, with more subtle emotions, that he did not look at
her now with any of the old light of satisfaction or approval in
his eye.  Evidently, along with other things, he was taking her
to be getting old and uninteresting.  He saw her wrinkles,
perhaps.  She was fading, while he was still preening himself in
his elegance and youth.  He was still an interested factor in the
merry-makings of the world, while she--but she did not pursue the
thought.  She only found the whole situation bitter, and hated
him for it thoroughly.

Nothing came of this incident at the time, for the truth is it
did not seem conclusive enough to warrant any discussion.  Only
the atmosphere of distrust and ill-feeling was strengthened,
precipitating every now and then little sprinklings of irritable
conversation, enlivened by flashes of wrath.  The matter of the
Waukesha outing was merely a continuation of other things of the
same nature.

The day after Carrie's appearance on the Avery stage, Mrs.
Hurstwood visited the races with Jessica and a youth of her
acquaintance, Mr. Bart Taylor, the son of the owner of a local
house-furnishing establishment.  They had driven out early, and,
as it chanced, encountered several friends of Hurstwood, all
Elks, and two of whom had attended the performance the evening
before.  A thousand chances the subject of the performance had
never been brought up had Jessica not been so engaged by the
attentions of her young companion, who usurped as much time as
possible.  This left Mrs. Hurstwood in the mood to extend the
perfunctory greetings of some who knew her into short
conversations, and the short conversations of friends into long
ones.  It was from one who meant but to greet her perfunctorily
that this interesting intelligence came.

"I see," said this individual, who wore sporting clothes of the
most attractive pattern, and had a field-glass strung over his
shoulder, "that you did not get over to our little entertainment
last evening."

"No?" said Mrs. Hurstwood, inquiringly, and wondering why he
should be using the tone he did in noting the fact that she had
not been to something she knew nothing about.  It was on her lips
to say, "What was it?" when he added, "I saw your husband."

Her wonder was at once replaced by the more subtle quality of
suspicion.

"Yes," she said, cautiously, "was it pleasant? He did not tell me
much about it."

"Very.  Really one of the best private theatricals I ever
attended.  There was one actress who surprised us all."

"Indeed," said Mrs. Hurstwood.

"It's too bad you couldn't have been there, really.  I was sorry
to hear you weren't feeling well."

Feeling well! Mrs. Hurstwood could have echoed the words after
him open-mouthed.  As it was, she extricated herself from her
mingled impulse to deny and question, and said, almost raspingly:

"Yes, it is too bad."

"Looks like there will be quite a crowd here to-day, doesn't it?"
the acquaintance observed, drifting off upon another topic.

The manager's wife would have questioned farther, but she saw no
opportunity.  She was for the moment wholly at sea, anxious to
think for herself, and wondering what new deception was this
which caused him to give out that she was ill when she was not.
Another case of her company not wanted, and excuses being made.
She resolved to find out more.

"Were you at the performance last evening?" she asked of the next
of Hurstwood's friends who greeted her as she sat in her box.

"Yes.  You didn't get around."

"No," she answered, "I was not feeling very well."

"So your husband told me," he answered.  "Well, it was really
very enjoyable.  Turned out much better than I expected."

"Were there many there?"

"The house was full.  It was quite an Elk night.  I saw quite a
number of your friends--Mrs. Harrison, Mrs. Barnes, Mrs.
Collins."

"Quite a social gathering."

"Indeed it was.  My wife enjoyed it very much."

Mrs. Hurstwood bit her lip.

"So," she thought, "that's the way he does.  Tells my friends I
am sick and cannot come."

She wondered what could induce him to go alone.  There was
something back of this.  She rummaged her brain for a reason.

By evening, when Hurstwood reached home, she had brooded herself
into a state of sullen desire for explanation and revenge.  She
wanted to know what this peculiar action of his imported.  She
was certain there was more behind it all than what she had heard,
and evil curiosity mingled well with distrust and the remnants of
her wrath of the morning.  She, impending disaster itself, walked
about with gathered shadow at the eyes and the rudimentary
muscles of savagery fixing the hard lines of her mouth.

On the other hand, as we may well believe, the manager came home
in the sunniest mood.  His conversation and agreement with Carrie
had raised his spirits until he was in the frame of mind of one
who sings joyously.  He was proud of himself, proud of his
success, proud of Carrie.  He could have been genial to all the
world, and he bore no grudge against his wife.  He meant to be
pleasant, to forget her presence, to live in the atmosphere of
youth and pleasure which had been restored to him.

So now, the house, to his mind, had a most pleasing and
comfortable appearance.  In the hall he found an evening paper,
laid there by the maid and forgotten by Mrs. Hurstwood.  In the
dining-room the table was clean laid with linen and napery and
shiny with glasses and decorated china.  Through an open door he
saw into the kitchen, where the fire was crackling in the stove
and the evening meal already well under way.  Out in the small
back yard was George, Jr., frolicking with a young dog he had
recently purchased, and in the parlour Jessica was playing at the
piano, the sounds of a merry waltz filling every nook and corner
of the comfortable home.  Every one, like himself, seemed to have
regained his good spirits, to be in sympathy with youth and
beauty, to be inclined to joy and merry-making.  He felt as if he
could say a good word all around himself, and took a most genial
glance at the spread table and polished sideboard before going
upstairs to read his paper in the comfortable armchair of the
sitting-room which looked through the open windows into the
street.  When he entered there, however, he found his wife
brushing her hair and musing to herself the while.

He came lightly in, thinking to smooth over any feeling that
might still exist by a kindly word and a ready promise, but Mrs.
Hurstwood said nothing.  He seated himself in the large chair,
stirred lightly in making himself comfortable, opened his paper,
and began to read.  In a few moments he was smiling merrily over
a very comical account of a baseball game which had taken place
between the Chicago and Detroit teams.

The while he was doing this Mrs. Hurstwood was observing him
casually through the medium of the mirror which was before her.
She noticed his pleasant and contented manner, his airy grace and
smiling humour, and it merely aggravated her the more.  She
wondered how he could think to carry himself so in her presence
after the cynicism, indifference, and neglect he had heretofore
manifested and would continue to manifest so long as she would
endure it.  She thought how she should like to tell him--what
stress and emphasis she would lend her assertions, how she should
drive over this whole affair until satisfaction should be
rendered her.  Indeed, the shining sword of her wrath was but
weakly suspended by a thread of thought.

In the meanwhile Hurstwood encountered a humorous item concerning
a stranger who had arrived in the city and became entangled with
a bunco-steerer.  It amused him immensely, and at last he stirred
and chuckled to himself.  He wished that he might enlist his
wife's attention and read it to her.

"Ha, ha," he exclaimed softly, as if to himself, "that's funny."

Mrs. Hurstwood kept on arranging her hair, not so much as
deigning a glance.

He stirred again and went on to another subject.  At last he felt
as if his good-humour must find some outlet.  Julia was probably
still out of humour over that affair of this morning, but that
could easily be straightened.  As a matter of fact, she was in
the wrong, but he didn't care.  She could go to Waukesha right
away if she wanted to.  The sooner the better.  He would tell her
that as soon as he got a chance, and the whole thing would blow
over.

"Did you notice," he said, at last, breaking forth concerning
another item which he had found, "that they have entered suit to
compel the Illinois Central to get off the lake front, Julia?" he
asked.

She could scarcely force herself to answer, but managed to say
"No," sharply.

Hurstwood pricked up his ears.  There was a note in her voice
which vibrated keenly.

"It would be a good thing if they did," he went on, half to
himself, half to her, though he felt that something was amiss in
that quarter.  He withdrew his attention to his paper very
circumspectly, listening mentally for the little sounds which
should show him what was on foot.

As a matter of fact, no man as clever as Hurstwood--as observant
and sensitive to atmospheres of many sorts, particularly upon his
own plane of thought--would have made the mistake which he did in
regard to his wife, wrought up as she was, had he not been
occupied mentally with a very different train of thought.  Had
not the influence of Carrie's regard for him, the elation which
her promise aroused in him, lasted over, he would not have seen
the house in so pleasant a mood.  It was not extraordinarily
bright and merry this evening.  He was merely very much mistaken,
and would have been much more fitted to cope with it had he come
home in his normal state.

After he had studied his paper a few moments longer, he felt that
he ought to modify matters in some way or other.  Evidently his
wife was not going to patch up peace at a word.  So he said:

"Where did George get the dog he has there in the yard?"

"I don't know," she snapped.

He put his paper down on his knees and gazed idly out of the
window.  He did not propose to lose his temper, but merely to be
persistent and agreeable, and by a few questions bring around a
mild understanding of some sort.

"Why do you feel so bad about that affair of this morning? he
said, at last. "We needn't quarrel about that.  You know you can
go to Waukesha if you want to."

"So you can stay here and trifle around with some one else?" she
exclaimed, turning to him a determined countenance upon which was
drawn a sharp and wrathful sneer.

He stopped as if slapped in the face.  In an instant his
persuasive, conciliatory manner fled.  He was on the defensive at
a wink and puzzled for a word to reply.

"What do you mean?" he said at last, straightening himself and
gazing at the cold, determined figure before him, who paid no
attention, but went on arranging herself before the mirror.

"You know what I mean," she said, finally, as if there were a
world of information which she held in reserve--which she did not
need to tell.

"Well, I don't," he said, stubbornly, yet nervous and alert for
what should come next.  The finality of the woman's manner took
away his feeling of superiority in battle.

She made no answer.

"Hmph!" he murmured, with a movement of his head to one side.  It
was the weakest thing he had ever done.  It was totally
unassured.

Mrs. Hurstwood noticed the lack of colour in it.  She turned upon
him, animal-like, able to strike an effectual second blow.

"I want the Waukesha money to-morrow morning," she said.

He looked at her in amazement.  Never before had he seen such a
cold, steely determination in her eye--such a cruel look of
indifference.  She seemed a thorough master of her mood--
thoroughly confident and determined to wrest all control from
him.  He felt that all his resources could not defend him.  He
must attack.

"What do you mean?" he said, jumping up.  "You want! I'd like to
know what's got into you to-night."

"Nothing's GOT into me," she said, flaming.  "I want that money.
You can do your swaggering afterwards."

"Swaggering, eh! What! You'll get nothing from me.  What do you
mean by your insinuations, anyhow?"

"Where were you last night?" she answered.  The words were hot as
they came.  "Who were you driving with on Washington Boulevard?
Who were you with at the theatre when George saw you? Do you
think I'm a fool to be duped by you? Do you think I'll sit at
home here and take your 'too busys' and 'can't come,' while you
parade around and make out that I'm unable to come? I want you to
know that lordly airs have come to an end so far as I am
concerned.  You can't dictate to me nor my children.  I'm through
with you entirely."

"It's a lie," he said, driven to a corner and knowing no other
excuse.

"Lie, eh!" she said, fiercely, but with returning reserve; "you
may call it a lie if you want to, but I know."

"It's a lie, I tell you," he said, in a low, sharp voice.
"You've been searching around for some cheap accusation for
months and now you think you have it.  You think you'll spring
something and get the upper hand.  Well, I tell you, you can't.
As long as I'm in this house I'm master of it, and you or any one
else won't dictate to me--do you hear?"

He crept toward her with a light in his eye that was ominous.
Something in the woman's cool, cynical, upper-handish manner, as
if she were already master, caused him to feel for the moment as
if he could strangle her.

She gazed at him--a pythoness in humour.

"I'm not dictating to you," she returned; "I'm telling you what I
want."

The answer was so cool, so rich in bravado, that somehow it took
the wind out of his sails.  He could not attack her, he could not
ask her for proofs.  Somehow he felt evidence, law, the
remembrance of all his property which she held in her name, to be
shining in her glance.  He was like a vessel, powerful and
dangerous, but rolling and floundering without sail.

"And I'm telling you," he said in the end, slightly recovering
himself, "what you'll not get."

"We'll see about it," she said.  "I'll find out what my rights
are.  Perhaps you'll talk to a lawyer, if you won't to me."

It was a magnificent play, and had its effect.  Hurstwood fell
back beaten.  He knew now that he had more than mere bluff to
contend with.  He felt that he was face to face with a dull
proposition.  What to say he hardly knew.  All the merriment had
gone out of the day.  He was disturbed, wretched, resentful.
What should he do?
"Do as you please," he said, at last.  "I'll have nothing more to
do with you," and out he strode.

Chapter XXIII

A SPIRIT IN TRAVAIL--ONE RUNG PUT BEHIND

When Carrie reached her own room she had already fallen a prey to
those doubts and misgivings which are ever the result of a lack
of decision.  She could not persuade herself as to the
advisability of her promise, or that now, having given her word,
she ought to keep it.  She went over the whole ground in
Hurstwood's absence, and discovered little objections that had
not occurred to her in the warmth of the manager's argument.  She
saw where she had put herself in a peculiar light, namely, that
of agreeing to marry when she was already supposedly married.
She remembered a few things Drouet had done, and now that it came
to walking away from him without a word, she felt as if she were
doing wrong.  Now, she was comfortably situated, and to one who
is more or less afraid of the world, this is an urgent matter,
and one which puts up strange, uncanny arguments.  "You do not
know what will come.  There are miserable things outside.  People
go a-begging.  Women are wretched.  You never can tell what will
happen.  Remember the time you were hungry.  Stick to what you
have."

Curiously, for all her leaning towards Hurstwood, he had not
taken a firm hold on her understanding.  She was listening,
smiling, approving, and yet not finally agreeing.  This was due
to a lack of power on his part, a lack of that majesty of passion
that sweeps the mind from its seat, fuses and melts all arguments
and theories into a tangled mass, and destroys for the time being
the reasoning power.  This majesty of passion is possessed by
nearly every man once in his life, but it is usually an attribute
of youth and conduces to the first successful mating.

Hurstwood, being an older man, could scarcely be said to retain
the fire of youth, though he did possess a passion warm and
unreasoning.  It was strong enough to induce the leaning toward
him which, on Carrie's part, we have seen.  She might have been
said to be imagining herself in love, when she was not.  Women
frequently do this.  It flows from the fact that in each exists a
bias toward affection, a craving for the pleasure of being loved.
The longing to be shielded, bettered, sympathised with, is one of
the attributes of the sex.  This, coupled with sentiment and a
natural tendency to emotion, often makes refusing difficult.  It
persuades them that they are in love.

Once at home, she changed her clothes and straightened the rooms
for herself.  In the matter of the arrangement of the furniture
she never took the housemaid's opinion.  That young woman
invariably put one of the rocking-chairs in the corner, and
Carrie as regularly moved it out.  To-day she hardly noticed that
it was in the wrong place, so absorbed was she in her own
thoughts.  She worked about the room until Drouet put in
appearance at five o'clock.  The drummer was flushed and excited
and full of determination to know all about her relations with
Hurstwood.  Nevertheless, after going over the subject in his
mind the livelong day, he was rather weary of it and wished it
over with.  He did not foresee serious consequences of any sort,
and yet he rather hesitated to begin.  Carrie was sitting by the
window when he came in, rocking and looking out.
"Well," she said innocently, weary of her own mental discussion
and wondering at his haste and ill-concealed excitement, "what
makes you hurry so?"

Drouet hesitated, now that he was in her presence, uncertain as
to what course to pursue.  He was no diplomat.  He could neither
read nor see.

"When did you get home?" he asked foolishly.

"Oh, an hour or so ago.  What makes you ask that?"

"You weren't here," he said, "when I came back this morning, and
I thought you had gone out."

"So I did," said Carrie simply.  "I went for a walk."

Drouet looked at her wonderingly.  For all his lack of dignity in
such matters he did not know how to begin.  He stared at her in
the most flagrant manner until at last she said:

"What makes you stare at me so? What's the matter?"

"Nothing," he answered.  "I was just thinking."

"Just thinking what?" she returned smilingly, puzzled by his
attitude.

"Oh, nothing--nothing much."

"Well, then, what makes you look so?"

Drouet was standing by the dresser, gazing at her in a comic
manner.  He had laid off his hat and gloves and was now fidgeting
with the little toilet pieces which were nearest him.  He
hesitated to believe that the pretty woman before him was
involved in anything so unsatisfactory to himself.  He was very
much inclined to feel that it was all right, after all.  Yet the
knowledge imparted to him by the chambermaid was rankling in his
mind.  He wanted to plunge in with a straight remark of some
sort, but he knew not what.

"Where did you go this morning?" he finally asked weakly.

"Why, I went for a walk," said Carrie.

"Sure you did?" he asked.

"Yes, what makes you ask?"

She was beginning to see now that he knew something.  Instantly
she drew herself into a more reserved position.  Her cheeks
blanched slightly.

"I thought maybe you didn't," he said, beating about the bush in
the most useless manner.

Carrie gazed at him, and as she did so her ebbing courage halted.
She saw that he himself was hesitating, and with a woman's
intuition realised that there was no occasion for great alarm.

"What makes you talk like that?" she asked, wrinkling her pretty
forehead.  "You act so funny to-night."

"I feel funny," he answered.
They looked at one another for a moment, and then Drouet plunged
desperately into his subject.

"What's this about you and Hurstwood?" he asked.

"Me and Hurstwood--what do you mean?"

"Didn't he come here a dozen times while I was away?"

"A dozen times," repeated Carrie, guiltily.  "No, but what do you
mean?"

"Somebody said that you went out riding with him and that he came
here every night."

"No such thing," answered Carrie.  "It isn't true.  Who told you
that?"

She was flushing scarlet to the roots of her hair, but Drouet did
not catch the full hue of her face, owing to the modified light
of the room.  He was regaining much confidence as Carrie defended
herself with denials.

"Well, some one," he said.  "You're sure you didn't?"

"Certainly," said Carrie.  "You know how often he came."

Drouet paused for a moment and thought.

"I know what you told me," he said finally.

He moved nervously about, while Carrie looked at him confusedly.

"Well, I know that I didn't tell you any such thing as that,"
said Carrie, recovering herself.

"If I were you," went on Drouet, ignoring her last remark, "I
wouldn't have anything to do with him.  He's a married man, you
know."

"Who--who is?" said Carrie, stumbling at the word.

"Why, Hurstwood," said Drouet, noting the effect and feeling that
he was delivering a telling blow.

"Hurstwood!" exclaimed Carrie, rising.  Her face had changed
several shades since this announcement was made.  She looked
within and without herself in a half-dazed way.

"Who told you this?" she asked, forgetting that her interest was
out of order and exceedingly incriminating.

"Why, I know it.  I've always known it," said Drouet.

Carrie was feeling about for a right thought.  She was making a
most miserable showing, and yet feelings were generating within
her which were anything but crumbling cowardice.

"I thought I told you," he added.

"No, you didn't," she contradicted, suddenly recovering her
voice.  "You didn't do anything of the kind."

Drouet listened to her in astonishment.  This was something new.

"I thought I did," he said.

Carrie looked around her very solemnly, and then went over to the
window.

"You oughtn't to have had anything to do with him," said Drouet
in an injured tone, "after all I've done for you."

"You," said Carrie, "you! What have you done for me?"

Her little brain had been surging with contradictory feelings--
shame at exposure, shame at Hurstwood's perfidy, anger at
Drouet's deception, the mockery he had made at her.  Now one
clear idea came into her head.  He was at fault.  There was no
doubt about it.  Why did he bring Hurstwood out--Hurstwood, a
married man, and never say a word to her? Never mind now about
Hurstwood's perfidy--why had he done this? Why hadn't he warned
her? There he stood now, guilty of this miserable breach of
confidence and talking about what he had done for her!

"Well, I like that," exclaimed Drouet, little realising the fire
his remark had generated.  "I think I've done a good deal."

"You have, eh?" she answered.  "You've deceived me--that's what
you've done.  You've brought your old friends out here under
false pretences.  You've made me out to be--Oh," and with this
her voice broke and she pressed her two little hands together
tragically.

"I don't see what that's got to do with it," said the drummer
quaintly.

"No," she answered, recovering herself and shutting her teeth.
"No, of course you don't see.  There isn't anything you see.  You
couldn't have told me in the first place, could you? You had to
make me out wrong until it was too late.  Now you come sneaking
around with your information and your talk about what you have
done."

Drouet had never suspected this side of Carrie's nature.  She was
alive with feeling, her eyes snapping, her lips quivering, her
whole body sensible of the injury she felt, and partaking of her
wrath.

"Who's sneaking?" he asked, mildly conscious of error on his
part, but certain that he was wronged.

"You are," stamped Carrie.  "You're a horrid, conceited coward,
that's what you are.  If you had any sense of manhood in you, you
wouldn't have thought of doing any such thing."

The drummer stared.

"I'm not a coward," he said.  "What do you mean by going with
other men, anyway?"

"Other men!" exclaimed Carrie.  "Other men--you know better than
that.  I did go with Mr. Hurstwood, but whose fault was it?
Didn't you bring him here? You told him yourself that he should
come out here and take me out.  Now, after it's all over, you
come and tell me that I oughtn't to go with him and that he's a
married man."

She paused at the sound of the last two words and wrung her
hands.  The knowledge of Hurstwood's perfidy wounded her like a
knife.
"Oh," she sobbed, repressing herself wonderfully and keeping her
eyes dry.  "Oh, oh!"

"Well, I didn't think you'd be running around with him when I was
away," insisted Drouet.

"Didn't think!" said Carrie, now angered to the core by the man's
peculiar attitude.  "Of course not.  You thought only of what
would be to your satisfaction.  You thought you'd make a toy of
me--a plaything.  Well, I'll show you that you won't.  I'll have
nothing more to do with you at all.  You can take your old things
and keep them," and unfastening a little pin he had given her,
she flung it vigorously upon the floor and began to move about as
if to gather up the things which belonged to her.

By this Drouet was not only irritated but fascinated the more.
He looked at her in amazement, and finally said:

"I don't see where your wrath comes in.  I've got the right of
this thing.  You oughtn't to have done anything that wasn't right
after all I did for you."

"What have you done for me?" asked Carrie blazing, her head
thrown back and her lips parted.

"I think I've done a good deal," said the drummer, looking
around.  "I've given you all the clothes you wanted, haven't I?
I've taken you everywhere you wanted to go.  You've had as much
as I've had, and more too."

Carrie was not ungrateful, whatever else might be said of her.
In so far as her mind could construe, she acknowledged benefits
received.  She hardly knew how to answer this, and yet her wrath
was not placated.  She felt that the drummer had injured her
irreparably.

"Did I ask you to?" she returned.

"Well, I did it," said Drouet, "and you took it."

"You talk as though I had persuaded you," answered Carrie.  "You
stand there and throw up what you've done.  I don't want your old
things.  I'll not have them.  You take them to-night and do what
you please with them.  I'll not stay here another minute."

"That's nice!" he answered, becoming angered now at the sense of
his own approaching loss.  "Use everything and abuse me and then
walk off.  That's just like a woman.  I take you when you haven't
got anything, and then when some one else comes along, why I'm no
good.  I always thought it'd come out that way."

He felt really hurt as he thought of his treatment, and looked as
if he saw no way of obtaining justice.

"It's not so," said Carrie, "and I'm not going with anybody else.
You have been as miserable and inconsiderate as you can be.  I
hate you, I tell you, and I wouldn't live with you another
minute.  You're a big, insulting"--here she hesitated and used no
word at all--"or you wouldn't talk that way."

She had secured her hat and jacket and slipped the latter on over
her little evening dress.  Some wisps of wavy hair had loosened
from the bands at the side of her head and were straggling over
her hot, red cheeks.  She was angry, mortified, grief-stricken.
Her large eyes were full of the anguish of tears, but her lids
were not yet wet.  She was distracted and uncertain, deciding and
doing things without an aim or conclusion, and she had not the
slightest conception of how the whole difficulty would end.

"Well, that's a fine finish," said Drouet.  "Pack up and pull
out, eh? You take the cake.  I bet you were knocking around with
Hurstwood or you wouldn't act like that.  I don't want the old
rooms.  You needn't pull out for me.  You can have them for all I
care, but b'George, you haven't done me right."

"I'll not live with you," said Carrie.  "I don't want to live
with you.  You've done nothing but brag around ever since you've
been here."

"Aw, I haven't anything of the kind," he answered.

Carrie walked over to the door.

"Where are you going?" he said, stepping over and heading her
off.

"Let me out," she said.

"Where are you going?" he repeated.

He was, above all, sympathetic, and the sight of Carrie wandering
out, he knew not where, affected him, despite his grievance.

Carrie merely pulled at the door.

The strain of the situation was too much for her, however.  She
made one more vain effort and then burst into tears.

"Now, be reasonable, Cad," said Drouet gently.  "What do you want
to rush out for this way? You haven't any place to go.  Why not
stay here now and be quiet? I'll not bother you.  I don't want to
stay here any longer."

Carrie had gone sobbing from the door to the window.  She was so
overcome she could not speak.

"Be reasonable now," he said.  "I don't want to hold you.  You
can go if you want to, but why don't you think it over? Lord
knows, I don't want to stop you."

He received no answer.  Carrie was quieting, however, under the
influence of his plea.

"You stay here now, and I'll go," he added at last.

Carrie listened to this with mingled feelings.  Her mind was
shaken loose from the little mooring of logic that it had.  She
was stirred by this thought, angered by that--her own injustice,
Hurstwood's, Drouet's, their respective qualities of kindness and
favour, the threat of the world outside, in which she had failed
once before, the impossibility of this state inside, where the
chambers were no longer justly hers, the effect of the argument
upon her nerves, all combined to make her a mass of jangling
fibres--an anchorless, storm-beaten little craft which could do
absolutely nothing but drift.

"Say," said Drouet, coming over to her after a few moments, with
a new idea, and putting his hand upon her.

"Don't!" said Carrie, drawing away, but not removing her
handkerchief from her eyes.
"Never mind about this quarrel now.  Let it go.  You stay here
until the month's out, anyhow, and then you can tell better what
you want to do.  Eh?"

Carrie made no answer.

"You'd better do that," he said.  "There's no use your packing up
now.  You can't go anywhere."

Still he got nothing for his words.

"If you'll do that, we'll call it off for the present and I'll
get out."

Carrie lowered her handkerchief slightly and looked out of the
window.

"Will you do that?" he asked.

Still no answer.

"Will you?" he repeated.

She only looked vaguely into the street.

"Aw! come on," he said, "tell me.  Will you?"

"I don't know," said Carrie softly, forced to answer.

"Promise me you'll do that," he said, "and we'll quit talking
about it.  It'll be the best thing for you."

Carrie heard him, but she could not bring herself to answer
reasonably.  She felt that the man was gentle, and that his
interest in her had not abated, and it made her suffer a pang of
regret.  She was in a most helpless plight.

As for Drouet, his attitude had been that of the jealous lover.
Now his feelings were a mixture of anger at deception, sorrow at
losing Carrie, misery at being defeated.  He wanted his rights in
some way or other, and yet his rights included the retaining of
Carrie, the making her feel her error.

"Will you?" he urged.

"Well, I'll see," said Carrie.

This left the matter as open as before, but it was something.  It
looked as if the quarrel would blow over, if they could only get
some way of talking to one another.  Carrie was ashamed, and
Drouet aggrieved.  He pretended to take up the task of packing
some things in a valise.

Now, as Carrie watched him out of the corner of her eye, certain
sound thoughts came into her head.  He had erred, true, but what
had she done? He was kindly and good-natured for all his egotism.
Throughout this argument he had said nothing very harsh.  On the
other hand, there was Hurstwood--a greater deceiver than he.  He
had pretended all this affection, all this passion, and he was
lying to her all the while.  Oh, the perfidy of men! And she had
loved him.  There could be nothing more in that quarter.  She
would see Hurstwood no more.  She would write him and let him
know what she thought.  Thereupon what would she do? Here were
these rooms.  Here was Drouet, pleading for her to remain.
Evidently things could go on here somewhat as before, if all were
arranged.  It would be better than the street, without a place to
lay her head.

All this she thought of as Drouet rummaged the drawers for
collars and laboured long and painstakingly at finding a shirt-
stud.  He was in no hurry to rush this matter.  He felt an
attraction to Carrie which would not down.  He could not think
that the thing would end by his walking out of the room.  There
must be some way round, some way to make her own up that he was
right and she was wrong--to patch up a peace and shut out
Hurstwood for ever.  Mercy, how he turned at the man's shameless
duplicity.

"Do you think," he said, after a few moments' silence, "that
you'll try and get on the stage?"

He was wondering what she was intending.

"I don't know what I'll do yet," said Carrie.

"If you do, maybe I can help you.  I've got a lot of friends in
that line."

She made no answer to this.

"Don't go and try to knock around now without any money.  Let me
help you," he said.  "It's no easy thing to go on your own hook
here."

Carrie only rocked back and forth in her chair.

"I don't want you to go up against a hard game that way."

He bestirred himself about some other details and Carrie rocked
on.

"Why don't you tell me all about this thing," he said, after a
time, "and let's call it off? You don't really care for
Hurstwood, do you?"

"Why do you want to start on that again?" said Carrie.  "You were
to blame."

"No, I wasn't," he answered.

"Yes, you were, too," said Carrie.  "You shouldn't have ever told
me such a story as that."

"But you didn't have much to do with him, did you?" went on
Drouet, anxious for his own peace of mind to get some direct
denial from her.

"I won't talk about it," said Carrie, pained at the quizzical
turn the peace arrangement had taken.

"What's the use of acting like that now, Cad?" insisted the
drummer, stopping in his work and putting up a hand expressively.
"You might let me know where I stand, at least."

"I won't," said Carrie, feeling no refuge but in anger.
"Whatever has happened is your own fault."

"Then you do care for him?" said Drouet, stopping completely and
experiencing a rush of feeling.

"Oh, stop!" said Carrie.
"Well, I'll not be made a fool of," exclaimed Drouet.  "You may
trifle around with him if you want to, but you can't lead me.
You can tell me or not, just as you want to, but I won't fool any
longer!"

He shoved the last few remaining things he had laid out into his
valise and snapped it with a vengeance.  Then he grabbed his
coat, which he had laid off to work, picked up his gloves, and
started out.

"You can go to the deuce as far as I am concerned," he said, as
he reached the door.  "I'm no sucker," and with that he opened it
with a jerk and closed it equally vigorously.

Carrie listened at her window view, more astonished than anything
else at this sudden rise of passion in the drummer.  She could
hardly believe her senses--so good-natured and tractable had he
invariably been.  It was not for her to see the wellspring of
human passion.  A real flame of love is a subtle thing.  It burns
as a will-o'-the-wisp, dancing onward to fairylands of delight.
It roars as a furnace.  Too often jealousy is the quality upon
which it feeds.

Chapter XXIV

ASHES OF TINDER--A FACE AT THE WINDOW

That night Hurstwood remained down town entirely, going to the
Palmer House for a bed after his work was through.  He was in a
fevered state of mind, owing to the blight his wife's action
threatened to cast upon his entire future.  While he was not sure
how much significance might be attached to the threat she had
made, he was sure that her attitude, if long continued, would
cause him no end of trouble.  She was determined, and had worsted
him in a very important contest.  How would it be from now on? He
walked the floor of his little office, and later that of his
room, putting one thing and another together to no avail.

Mrs. Hurstwood, on the contrary, had decided not to lose her
advantage by inaction.  Now that she had practically cowed him,
she would follow up her work with demands, the acknowledgment of
which would make her word LAW in the future.  He would have to
pay her the money which she would now regularly demand or there
would be trouble.  It did not matter what he did.  She really did
not care whether he came home any more or not.  The household
would move along much more pleasantly without him, and she could
do as she wished without consulting any one.  Now she proposed to
consult a lawyer and hire a detective.  She would find out at
once just what advantages she could gain.

Hurstwood walked the floor, mentally arranging the chief points
of his situation.  "She has that property in her name," he kept
saying to himself.  "What a fool trick that was.  Curse it! What
a fool move that was."

He also thought of his managerial position.  "If she raises a row
now I'll lose this thing.  They won't have me around if my name
gets in the papers.  My friends, too!" He grew more angry as he
thought of the talk any action on her part would create.  How
would the papers talk about it? Every man he knew would be
wondering.  He would have to explain and deny and make a general
mark of himself.  Then Moy would come and confer with him and
there would be the devil to pay.

Many little wrinkles gathered between his eyes as he contemplated
this, and his brow moistened.  He saw no solution of anything--
not a loophole left.

Through all this thoughts of Carrie flashed upon him, and the
approaching affair of Saturday.  Tangled as all his matters were,
he did not worry over that.  It was the one pleasing thing in
this whole rout of trouble.  He could arrange that
satisfactorily, for Carrie would be glad to wait, if necessary.
He would see how things turned out to-morrow, and then he would
talk to her.  They were going to meet as usual.  He saw only her
pretty face and neat figure and wondered why life was not
arranged so that such joy as he found with her could be steadily
maintained.  How much more pleasant it would be.  Then he would
take up his wife's threat again, and the wrinkles and moisture
would return.

In the morning he came over from the hotel and opened his mail,
but there was nothing in it outside the ordinary run.  For some
reason he felt as if something might come that way, and was
relieved when all the envelopes had been scanned and nothing
suspicious noticed.  He began to feel the appetite that had been
wanting before he had reached the office, and decided before
going out to the park to meet Carrie to drop in at the Grand
Pacific and have a pot of coffee and some rolls.  While the
danger had not lessened, it had not as yet materialised, and with
him no news was good news.  If he could only get plenty of time
to think, perhaps something would turn up.  Surely, surely, this
thing would not drift along to catastrophe and he not find a way
out.

His spirits fell, however, when, upon reaching the park, he
waited and waited and Carrie did not come.  He held his favourite
post for an hour or more, then arose and began to walk about
restlessly.  Could something have happened out there to keep her
away? Could she have been reached by his wife? Surely not.  So
little did he consider Drouet that it never once occurred to him
to worry about his finding out.  He grew restless as he
ruminated, and then decided that perhaps it was nothing.  She had
not been able to get away this morning.  That was why no letter
notifying him had come.  He would get one to-day.  It would
probably be on his desk when he got back.  He would look for it
at once.

After a time he gave up waiting and drearily headed for the
Madison car.  To add to his distress, the bright blue sky became
overcast with little fleecy clouds which shut out the sun.  The
wind veered to the east, and by the time he reached his office it
was threatening to drizzle all afternoon.

He went in and examined his letters, but there was nothing from
Carrie.  Fortunately, there was nothing from his wife either.  He
thanked his stars that he did not have to confront that
proposition just now when he needed to think so much.  He walked
the floor again, pretending to be in an ordinary mood, but
secretly troubled beyond the expression of words.

At one-thirty he went to Rector's for lunch, and when he returned
a messenger was waiting for him.  He looked at the little chap
with a feeling of doubt.

"I'm to bring an answer," said the boy.

Hurstwood recognised his wife's writing.  He tore it open and
read without a show of feeling.  It began in the most formal
manner and was sharply and coldly worded throughout.

"I want you to send the money I asked for at once.  I need it to
carry out my plans.  You can stay away if you want to.  It
doesn't matter in the least.  But I must have some money.  So
don't delay, but send it by the boy."

When he had finished it, he stood holding it in his hands.  The
audacity of the thing took his breath.  It roused his ire also--
the deepest element of revolt in him.  His first impulse was to
write but four words in reply--"Go to the devil!"--but he
compromised by telling the boy that there would be no reply.
Then he sat down in his chair and gazed without seeing,
contemplating the result of his work.  What would she do about
that? The confounded wretch! Was she going to try to bulldoze him
into submission? He would go up there and have it out with her,
that's what he would do.  She was carrying things with too high a
hand.  These were his first thoughts.

Later, however, his old discretion asserted itself.  Something
had to be done.  A climax was near and she would not sit idle.
He knew her well enough to know that when she had decided upon a
plan she would follow it up.  Possibly matters would go into a
lawyer's hands at once.

"Damn her!" he said softly, with his teeth firmly set, "I'll make
it hot for her if she causes me trouble.  I'll make her change
her tone if I have to use force to do it!"

He arose from his chair and went and looked out into the street.
The long drizzle had begun.  Pedestrians had turned up collars,
and trousers at the bottom.  Hands were hidden in the pockets of
the umbrellaless; umbrellas were up.  The street looked like a
sea of round black cloth roofs, twisting, bobbing, moving.
Trucks and vans were rattling in a noisy line and everywhere men
were shielding themselves as best they could.  He scarcely
noticed the picture.  He was forever confronting his wife,
demanding of her to change her attitude toward him before he
worked her bodily harm.

At four o'clock another note came, which simply said that if the
money was not forthcoming that evening the matter would be laid
before Fitzgerald and Moy on the morrow, and other steps would be
taken to get it.

Hurstwood almost exclaimed out loud at the insistency of this
thing.  Yes, he would send her the money.  He'd take it to her--
he would go up there and have a talk with her, and that at once.

He put on his hat and looked around for his umbrella.  He would
have some arrangement of this thing.

He called a cab and was driven through the dreary rain to the
North Side.  On the way his temper cooled as he thought of the
details of the case.  What did she know? What had she done? Maybe
she'd got hold of Carrie, who knows--or--or Drouet.  Perhaps she
really had evidence, and was prepared to fell him as a man does
another from secret ambush.  She was shrewd.  Why should she
taunt him this way unless she had good grounds?

He began to wish that he had compromised in some way or other--
that he had sent the money.  Perhaps he could do it up here.  He
would go in and see, anyhow.  He would have no row.  By the time
he reached his own street he was keenly alive to the difficulties
of his situation and wished over and over that some solution
would offer itself, that he could see his way out.  He alighted
and went up the steps to the front door, but it was with a
nervous palpitation of the heart.  He pulled out his key and
tried to insert it, but another key was on the inside.  He shook
at the knob, but the door was locked.  Then he rang the bell.  No
answer.  He rang again--this time harder.  Still no answer.  He
jangled it fiercely several times in succession, but without
avail.  Then he went below.

There was a door which opened under the steps into the kitchen,
protected by an iron grating, intended as a safeguard against
burglars.  When he reached this he noticed that it also was
bolted and that the kitchen windows were down.  What could it
mean? He rang the bell and then waited.  Finally, seeing that no
one was coming, he turned and went back to his cab.

"I guess they've gone out," he said apologetically to the
individual who was hiding his red face in a loose tarpaulin
raincoat.

"I saw a young girl up in that winder," returned the cabby.

Hurstwood looked, but there was no face there now.  He climbed
moodily into the cab, relieved and distressed.

So this was the game, was it? Shut him out and make him pay.
Well, by the Lord, that did beat all!