That night the pretty little flat seemed a commonplace thing.  It was not what the rest of the world was enjoying.  She saw the servant working at dinner with an indifferent eye.  In her mind were running scenes of the play.  Particularly she remembered one beautiful actress--the sweetheart who had been wooed and won.  The grace of this woman had won Carrie’s heart.  Her dresses had been all that art could suggest, her sufferings had been so real.  The anguish which she had portrayed Carrie could feel.  It was done as she was sure she could do it.  There were places in which she could even do better.  Hence she repeated the lines to herself.  Oh, if she could only have such a part, how broad would be her life!  She, too, could act appealingly.

When Hurstwood came, Carrie was moody.  She was sitting, rocking and thinking, and did not care to have her enticing imaginations broken in upon; so she said little or nothing.

“What’s the matter, Carrie?” said Hurstwood after a time, noticing her quiet, almost moody state.

“Nothing,” said Carrie.  “I don’t feel very well tonight.”

“Not sick, are you?” he asked, approaching very close.

“Oh, no,” she said, almost pettishly, “I just don’t feel very good.”

“That’s too bad,” he said, stepping away and adjusting his vest after his slight bending over.  “I was thinking we might go to a show to-night.”

“I don’t want to go,” said Carrie, annoyed that her fine visions should have thus been broken into and driven out of her mind.  “I’ve been to the matinee this afternoon.”

“Oh, you have?” said Hurstwood.  “What was it?”

“A Gold Mine.”

“How was it?”

“Pretty good,” said Carrie.

“And you don’t want to go again to night?”

“I don’t think I do,” she said.

Nevertheless, wakened out of her melancholia and called to the dinner table, she changed her mind.  A little food in the stomach does wonders.  She went again, and in so doing temporarily recovered her equanimity.  The great awakening blow had, however, been delivered.  As often as she might recover from these discontented thoughts now, they would occur again.  Time and repetition—­ah, the wonder of it!  The dropping water and the solid stone—­how utterly it yields at last!

Not long after this matinee experience—­perhaps a month—­Mrs. Vance invited Carrie to an evening at the theatre with them.  She heard Carrie say that Hurstwood was not coming home to dinner.

“Why don’t you come with us?  Don’t get dinner for yourself.  We’re going down to Sherry’s for dinner and then over to the Lyceum.  Come along with us.”

“I think I will,” answered Carrie.

She began to dress at three o’clock for her departure at half past five for the noted dining-room which was then crowding Delmonico’s for position in society.  In this dressing Carrie showed the influence of her association with the dashing Mrs. Vance.  She had constantly had her attention called by the latter to novelties in everything which pertains to a woman’s apparel.