During the acts Carrie found herself listening to him very attentively.
He mentioned things in the play which she most approved of — things which swayed her deeply.
“Don’t you think it rather fine to be an actor?” she asked once.
“Yes, I do,” he said, “to be a good one.
I think the theatre a great thing.”
Just this little approval set Carrie’s heart bounding.
Ah, if she could only be an actress — a good one!
This man was wise — he knew — and he approved of it.
If she were a fine actress, such men as he would approve of her.
She felt that he was good to speak as he had, although it did not concern her at all.
She did not know why she felt this way.
At the close of the show it suddenly developed that he was not going back with them.
“Oh, aren’t you?” said Carrie, with an unwarrantable feeling.
“Oh, no,” he said;
“I’m stopping right around here in Thirty-third Street.”
Carrie could not say anything else, but somehow this development shocked her.
She had been regretting the wane of a pleasant evening, but she had thought there was a half-hour more.
Oh, the half-hours, the minutes of the world; what miseries and griefs are crowded into them!
She said good-bye with feigned indifference.
What matter could it make?
Still, the coach seemed lorn.
When she went into her own flat she had this to think about.
She did not know whether she would ever see this man any more.
What difference could it make — what difference could it make?
Hurstwood had returned, and was already in bed.
His clothes were scattered loosely about.
Carrie came to the door and saw him, then retreated.
She did not want to go in yet a while.
She wanted to think. It was disagreeable to her.
Back in the dining-room she sat in her chair and rocked. Her little hands were folded tightly as she thought.
Through a fog of longing and conflicting desires she was beginning to see.
Oh, ye legions of hope and pity — of sorrow and pain!
She was rocking, and beginning to see.
Chapter XXXIII
Without the Walled City — The Slope of the Years
The immediate result of this was nothing.
Results from such things are usually long in growing.
Morning brings a change of feeling. The existent condition invariably pleads for itself.
It is only at odd moments that we get glimpses of the misery of things.
The heart understands when it is confronted with contrasts. Take them away and the ache subsides.
Carrie went on, leading much this same life for six months thereafter or more.
She did not see Ames any more.
He called once upon the Vances, but she only heard about it through the young wife.
Then he went West, and there was a gradual subsidence of whatever personal attraction had existed.
The mental effect of the thing had not gone, however, and never would entirely.
She had an ideal to contrast men by — particularly men close to her.
During all this time — a period rapidly approaching three years — Hurstwood had been moving along in an even path.
There was no apparent slope downward, and distinctly none upward, so far as the casual observer might have seen.
But psychologically there was a change, which was marked enough to suggest the future very distinctly indeed.
This was in the mere matter of the halt his career had received when he departed from Chicago.