Carrie was an apt student of fortune's ways--of fortune'ssuperficialities. Seeing a thing, she would immediately set to inquiringhow she would look, properly related to it. Be it known that this is notfine 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. Fineclothes to her were a vast persuasion; they spoke tenderly andJesuitically for themselves. When she came within earshot of theirpleading, desire in her bent a willing ear. The voice of the so-calledinanimate! Who shall translate for us the language of the stones?

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

"Ah, such little feet," said the leather of the soft new shoes; "howeffectively 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 ofgiving them up; the method by which they came might intrude itself soforcibly that she would ache to be rid of the thought of it, but shewould not give them up. "Put on the old clothes--that torn pair ofshoes," was called to her by her conscience in vain. She could possiblyhave conquered the fear of hunger and gone back; the thought of hardwork and a narrow round of suffering would, under the last pressure ofconscience, have yielded, but spoil her appearance?--be old-clothed andpoor-appearing?--never!

Drouet heightened her opinion on this and allied subjects in such amanner as to weaken her power of resisting their influence. It is soeasy 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 heradmiringly, and she took it at its full value. Under the circumstances,she did not need to carry herself as pretty women do. She picked thatknowledge up fast enough for herself. Drouet had a habit, characteristicof his kind, of looking after stylishly dressed or pretty women on thestreet and remarking upon them. He had just enough of the feminine loveof dress to be a good judge--not of intellect, but of clothes. He sawhow they set their little feet, how they carried their chins, with whatgrace and sinuosity they swung their bodies. A dainty, self-consciousswaying of the hips by a woman was to him as alluring as the glint ofrare wine to a toper. He would turn and follow the disappearing visionwith his eyes. He would thrill as a child with the unhindered passionthat 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 thefirst 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 possibledefect in herself awakening in her mind. If that was so fine, she mustlook 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 reemphasized andadmired, she gathers the logic of it and applies accordingly. Drouetwas not shrewd enough to see that this was not tactful. He could not seethat it would be better to make her feel that she was competing withherself, not others better than herself. He would not have done it withan older, wiser woman, but in Carrie he saw only the novice. Less cleverthan she, he was naturally unable to comprehend her sensibility. He wenton educating and wounding her, a thing rather foolish in one whoseadmiration for his pupil and victim was apt to grow.

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

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

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-lookingbrunette of thirty-five. They were people of a sort very common inAmerica to-day, who live respectably from hand to mouth. Hale received asalary of forty-five dollars a week. His wife, quite attractive,affected the feeling of youth, and objected to that sort of home lifewhich means the care of a house and the raising of a family. Like Drouetand Carrie, they also occupied three rooms on the floor above.

Not long after she arrived Mrs. Hale established social relations withher, and together they went about. For a long time this was her onlycompanionship, and the gossip of the manager's wife formed the mediumthrough which she saw the world. Such trivialities, such praises ofwealth, such conventional expression of morals as sifted through thispassive creature's mind, fell upon Carrie and for the while confusedher.

On the other hand, her own feelings were a corrective influence. Theconstant drag to something better was not to be denied. By those thingswhich address the heart was she steadily recalled. In the apartmentsacross the hall were a young girl and her mother. They were fromEvansville, Indiana, the wife and daughter of a railroad treasurer. Thedaughter was here to study music, the mother to keep her company.

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

Now Carrie was affected by music. Her nervous composition responded tocertain strains, much as certain strings of a harp vibrate when acorresponding key of a piano is struck. She was delicately moulded insentiment, and answered with vague ruminations to certain wistfulchords. They awoke longings for those things which she did not have.They caused her to cling closer to things she possessed. One short songthe young lady played in a most soulful and tender mood. Carrie heard itthrough the open door from the parlour below. It was at that hourbetween afternoon and night when, for the idle, the wanderer, things areapt to take on a wistful aspect. The mind wanders forth on far journeysand returns with sheaves of withered and departed joys. Carrie sat ather 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 whichDrouet had left there, though she did not wholly enjoy the latter, andby changing her dress for the evening. Now she sat looking out acrossthe park as wistful and depressed as the nature which craves variety andlife can be under such circumstances. As she contemplated her new state,the strain from the parlour below stole upward. With it her thoughtsbecame coloured and enmeshed. She reverted to the things which were bestand saddest within the small limit of her experience. She became for themoment a repentant.

While she was in this mood Drouet came in, bringing with him an entirelydifferent atmosphere. It was dusk and Carrie had neglected to light thelamp. 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 nothear it. He had not the poetry in him that would seek a woman out undersuch circumstances and console her for the tragedy of life. Instead, hestruck 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 wasprobably lack of his presence which had made her lonely.

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

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

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

Drouet noticed this. He saw the new bow in her hair and the new way ofarranging 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 thatselfsame day.

She used her feet less heavily, a thing that was brought about by herattempting to imitate the treasurer's daughter's graceful carriage. Howmuch influence the presence of that young woman in the same house hadupon 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 thanthe Carrie to whom Drouet had first spoken. The primary defects of dressand manner had passed. She was pretty, graceful, rich in the timidityborn of uncertainty, and with a something childlike in her large eyeswhich captured the fancy of this starched and conventional poser amongmen. It was the ancient attraction of the fresh for the stale. If therewas a touch of appreciation left in him for the bloom andunsophistication which is the charm of youth, it rekindled now. Helooked into her pretty face and felt the subtle waves of young liferadiating therefrom. In that large clear eye he could see nothing thathis _blasé_ nature could understand as guile. The little vanity, if hecould have perceived it there, would have touched him as a pleasantthing.

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

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 oneither hand. He folded his gloved hands and saw only the lighted chamberand 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 merelyfloating those gossamer threads of thought which, like the spider's, hehoped 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 hiswell-dressed lady acquaintances in Chicago on his return from a shorttrip to Omaha. He had intended to hurry out to Ogden Place and surpriseCarrie, but now he fell into an interesting conversation and soonmodified his original intention.

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

"Certainly," said his companion.

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

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

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

Drouet jumped from one easy thought to another as he caught Hurstwood'seye. He felt but very little misgiving, until he saw that Hurstwood wascautiously pretending not to see. Then some of the latter's impressionforced itself upon him. He thought of Carrie and their last meeting. ByGeorge, he would have to explain this to Hurstwood. Such a chancehalf-hour with an old friend must not have anything more attached to itthan it really warranted.

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

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

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

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

"An old acquaintance of mine that I ran into just as I was coming upfrom 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'mafraid you keep her cooped up out there. I'll get a box for JoeJefferson."

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

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

The object of this peculiarly involved comedy was not thinking ofeither. She was busy adjusting her thoughts and feelings to newerconditions, and was not in danger of suffering disturbing pangs fromeither 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'tcare to go to that myself."

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

Just then a knock came at their door and the maid-servant handed aletter in.

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

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

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

"Well, what do you say to this?" asked Drouet, innocently, whileCarrie'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. Shehardly explained to herself why this latest invitation appealed to hermost.

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

"Sure," he returned, pleasantly.

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

"I say," said Hurstwood, as they came up the theatre lobby, "we areexceedingly 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 ofthe old term spick and span.

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

"I never did," she returned.

"He's delightful, delightful," he went on, giving the commonplacerendition of approval which such men know. He sent Drouet after aprogramme, and then discoursed to Carrie concerning Jefferson as he hadheard of him. The former was pleased beyond expression, and was reallyhypnotised by the environment, the trappings of the box, the elegance ofher companion. Several times their eyes accidentally met, and then therepoured into hers such a flood of feeling as she had never beforeexperienced. She could not for the moment explain it, for in the nextglance 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'smind that here was the superior man. She instinctively felt that he wasstronger and higher, and yet withal so simple. By the end of the thirdact she was sure that Drouet was only a kindly soul, but otherwisedefective. He sank every moment in her estimation by the strongcomparison.

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

"Yes, indeed," added Drouet, who was not in the least aware that abattle had been fought and his defences weakened. He was like theEmperor of China, who sat glorying in himself, unaware that his fairestprovinces 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 tothe other.

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

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