The progress of the train was having a great deal to do with the solution of this difficult situation.  The speeding wheels and disappearing country put Chicago farther and farther behind.  Carrie could feel that she was being borne a long distance off-that the engine was making an almost through run to some distant city.  She felt at times as if she could cry out and make such a row that some one would come to her aid; at other times it seemed an almost useless thing—­so far was she from any aid, no matter what she did.  All the while Hurstwood was endeavoring to formulate his plea in such a way that it would strike home and bring her into sympathy with him.

“I was simply put where I didn’t know what else to do.”

Carrie deigned no suggestion of hearing this.

“When I say you wouldn’t come unless I could marry you, I decided to put everything else behind me and get you to come away with me.  I’m going off now to another city.  I want to go to Montreal for a while, and then anywhere you want to.  We’ll go and live in New York, if you say.”

“I’ll not have anything to do with you,” said Carrie.  “I want to get off this train.  Where are we going?”

“To Detroit,” said Hurstwood.

“Oh!” said Carrie, in a burst of anguish.  So distant and definite a point seemed to increase the difficulty.

“Won’t you come along with me?” he said, as if there was great danger that she would not.  “You won’t need to do anything but travel with me.  I’ll not trouble you in any way.  You can see Montreal and New York, and then if you don’t want to stay you can go back.  It will be better than trying to go back to-night.”

The first gleam of fairness shone in this proposition for Carrie.  It seemed a plausible thing to do, much as she feared his opposition if she tried to carry it out.  Montreal and New York!  Even now she was speeding toward those great, strange lands, and could see them if she liked.  She thought, but made no sign.

Hurstwood thought he saw a shade of compliance in this.  He redoubled his ardor.

“Think,” he said, “what I’ve given up.  I can’t go back to Chicago any more.  I’ve got to stay away and live alone now, if you don’t come with me.  You won’t go back on me entirely, will you, Carrie?”

“I don’t want you to talk to me,” she answered forcibly.

Hurstwood kept silent for a while.

Carrie felt the train to be slowing down.  It was the moment to act if she was to act at all.  She stirred uneasily.

“Don’t think of going, Carrie,” he said.  “If you ever cared for me at all, come along and let’s start right.  I’ll do whatever you say.  I’ll marry you, or I’ll let you go back.  Give yourself time to think it over.  I wouldn’t have wanted you to come if I hadn’t loved you.  I tell you, Carrie, before God, I can’t live without you.  I won’t!”

There was the tensity of fierceness in the man’s plea which appealed deeply to her sympathies.  It was a dissolving fire which was actuating him now.  He was loving her too intensely to think of giving her up in this, his hour of distress.  He clutched her hand nervously and pressed it with all the force of an appeal.