s 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 co