When the time came, he buoyed Carrie up most effectually.  He began to make her feel as if she had done very well.  The old melancholy of desire began to come back as he talked at her, and by the time the situation rolled around she was running high in feeling.

“I think I can do this.”

“Sure you can.  Now you go ahead and see.”

On the stage, Mrs. Van Dam was making her cruel insinuation against Laura.

Carrie listened, and caught the infection of something—­she did not know what.  Her nostrils sniffed thinly.

“It means,” the professional actor began, speaking as Ray, “that society is a terrible avenger of insult.  Have you ever heard of the Siberian wolves?  When one of the pack falls through weakness, the others devour him.  It is not an elegant comparison, but there is something wolfish in society.  Laura has mocked it with a pretence, and society, which is made up of pretence, will bitterly resent the mockery.”

At the sound of her stage name Carrie started.  She began to feel the bitterness of the situation.  The feelings of the outcast descended upon her.  She hung at the wing’s edge, wrapped in her own mounting thoughts.  She hardly heard anything more, save her own rumbling blood.

“Come, girls,” said Mrs. Van Dam, solemnly, “let us look after our things.  They are no longer safe when such an accomplished thief enters.”

“Cue,” said the prompter, close to her side, but she did not hear.  Already she was moving forward with a steady grace, born of inspiration.  She dawned upon the audience, handsome and proud, shifting, with the necessity of the situation, to a cold, white, helpless object, as the social pack moved away from her scornfully.

Hurstwood blinked his eyes and caught the infection.  The radiating waves of feeling and sincerity were already breaking against the farthest walls of the chamber.  The magic of passion, which will yet dissolve the world, was here at work.

There was a drawing, too, of attention, a riveting of feeling, heretofore wandering.

“Ray!  Ray!  Why do you not come back to her?” was the cry of Pearl.

Every eye was fixed on Carrie, still proud and scornful.  They moved as she moved.  Their eyes were with her eyes.

Mrs. Morgan, as Pearl, approached her.

“Let us go home,” she said.

“No,” answered Carrie, her voice assuming for the first time a penetrating quality which it had never known.  “Stay with him!”

She pointed an almost accusing hand toward her lover.  Then, with a pathos which struck home because of its utter simplicity, “He shall not suffer long.”

Hurstwood realized that he was seeing something extraordinarily good.  It was heightened for him by the applause of the audience as the curtain descended and the fact that it was Carrie.  He thought now that she was beautiful.  She had done something which was above his sphere.  He felt a keen delight in realizing that she was his.