“Good-night,” he said, simulating an easy friendliness.

“Good-night,” said the little actress, tenderly.

“The fool!” he said, now hating Drouet.  “The idiot!  I’ll do him yet, and that quick!  We’ll see to-morrow.”

“Well, if you aren’t a wonder,” Drouet was saying, complacently, squeezing Carrie’s arm.  “You are the dandiest little girl on earth.”

Chapter XX THE LURE OF THE SPIRIT—­THE FLESH IN PURSUIT

Passion in a man of Hurstwood’s nature takes a vigorous form.  It is no musing, dreamy thing.  There is none of the tendency to sing outside of my lady’s window—­to languish and repine in the face of difficulties.  In the night he was long getting to sleep because of too much thinking, and in the morning he was early awake, seizing with alacrity upon the same dear subject and pursuing it with vigor.  He was out of sorts physically, as well as disordered mentally, for did he not delight in a new manner in his Carrie, and was not Drouet in the way?  Never was man more harassed than he by the thoughts of his love being held by the elated, flush-mannered drummer.  He would have given anything, it seemed to him, to have the complication ended—­to have Carrie acquiesce to an arrangement which would dispose of Drouet effectually and forever.

What to do.  He dressed thinking.  He moved about in the same chamber with his wife, unmindful of her presence.

At breakfast he found himself without an appetite.  The meat to which he helped himself remained on his plate untouched.  His coffee grew cold, while he scanned the paper indifferently.  Here and there he read a little thing, but remembered nothing.  Jessica had not yet come down.  His wife sat at one end of the table revolving thoughts of her own in silence.  A new servant had been recently installed and had forgot the napkins.  On this account the silence was irritably broken by a reproof.

“I’ve told you about this before, Maggie,” said Mrs. Hurstwood.  “I’m not going to tell you again.”

Hurstwood took a glance at his wife.  She was frowning.  Just now her manner irritated him excessively.  Her next remark was addressed to him.

“Have you made up your mind, George, when you will take your vacation?”

It was customary for them to discuss the regular summer outing at this season of the year.

“Not yet,” he said, “I’m very busy just now.”

“Well, you’ll want to make up your mind pretty soon, won’t you, if we’re going?” she returned.

“I guess we have a few days yet,” he said.

“Hmff,” she returned.  “Don’t wait until the season’s over.”

She stirred in aggravation as she said this.

“There you go again,” he observed.  “One would think I never did anything, the way you begin.”

“Well, I want to know about it,” she reiterated.

“You’ve got a few days yet,” he insisted.  “You’ll not want to start before the races are over.”