ld not help feeling the
strangeness of her situation. How was it that, in so little a while,
the narrow life of the country had fallen from her as a garment, and
the city, with all its mystery, taken its place? Here was this greatest
mystery, the man of money and affairs sitting beside her, appealing
to her. Behold, he had ease and comfort, his strength was great, his
position high, his clothing rich, and yet he was appealing to her. She
could formulate no thought which would be just and right. She troubled
herself no more upon the matter. She only basked in the warmth of his
feeling, which was as a grateful blaze to one who is cold. Hurstwood
glowed with his own intensity, and the heat of his passion was already
melting the wax of his companion's scruples.

"You think," he said, "I am happy; that I ought not to complain? If you
were to meet all day with people who care absolutely nothing about you,
if you went day after day to a place where there was nothing but show
and indifference, if there was not one person in all those you knew to
whom you could appeal for sympathy or talk to with pleasure, perhaps you
would be unhappy too."

He was striking a chord now which found sympathetic response in her
own situation. She knew what it was to meet with people who were
indifferent, to walk alone amid so many who cared absolutely nothing
about you. Had not she? Was not she at this very moment quite alone? Who
was there among all whom she knew to whom she could appeal for sympathy?
Not one. She was left to herself to brood and wonder.

"I could be content," went on Hurstwood, "if I had you to love me. If
I had you to go to; you for a companion. As it is, I simply move about
from place to place without any satisfaction. Time hangs heavily on my
hands. Before you came I did nothing but idle and drift into anything
that offered itself. Since you came--well, I've had you to think about."

The old illusion that here was some one who needed her aid began to grow
in Carrie's mind. She truly pitied this sad, lonely figure. To think
that all his fine state should be so barren for want of her; that he
needed to make such an appeal when she herself was lonely and without
anchor. Surely, this was too bad.

"I am not very bad," he said, apologetically, as if he owed it to her to
explain on this score. "You think, probably, that I roam around, and get
into all sorts of evil? I have been rather reckless, but I could easily
come out of th