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His cravat was shiny combination of nice 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.
And yet she was not grieved at Hurstwood's love. No strain of bitterness was in it for her, whatever he knew. He was evidently sincere. His passion was real and warm. There was power in what he said. What should she do? She went on thinking this, answering vaguely, languishing affectionately, and altogether drifting, until she was on a borderless sea of speculation.
As he went, Carrie came out, and, seeing an immense basket of flowers being hurried down the aisle toward her she waited. They were Hurstwood's. She looked toward the manager's box for a moment, caught his eye, and smiled. He could have leaped out of the box to enfold her. He forgot the need of circumspectness which his married state enforced.
The mystic chords which bind and thrill the heart of the nation, they will never know. Hurstwood's residence could scarcely be said to be infused with this home spirit. It lacked that toleration and regard without which the home is nothing. There was fine furniture, arranged as soothingly as the artistic perception of the occupants warranted.
Hurstwood's residence on the North Side, near Lincoln Park, was a brick building of a very popular type then, a three-story affair with the first floor sunk a very little below the level of the street. It had a large bay window bulging out from the second floor, and was graced in front by a small grassy plot, twenty-five feet wide and ten feet deep.
Haven't lost at the track, have you?" "I'm not feeling very well to-night. I had a slight cold the other day." "Take whiskey, George," said Taintor. "You ought to know that." Hurstwood smiled. While they were still conferring there, several other of Hurstwood's friends entered, and not long after eleven, the theatres being out, some actors began to drop in among them some notabilities.
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.
"I believe I will," she said, and then added: "I'll have to see first, though." With the idea thus grounded, rent day approaching, and clothes calling for instant purchase, she soon found excuse in Hurstwood's lassitude. He said less and drooped more than ever. As rent day approached, an idea grew in him. It was fostered by the demands of creditors and the impossibility of holding up many more.
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."
A sharp voice answered her mental interrogation, driving away all immediate fears on that score. "Be sure you're there promptly," the manager said roughly. "You'll be dropped if you're not." Carrie hastened away. She did not quarrel now with Hurstwood's idleness. She had a place she had a place! This sang in her ears. In her delight she was almost anxious to tell Hurstwood.
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