And now the latter announced that they were going away.  It was approaching spring, and they were going North.

“Oh, yes,” said Mrs. Vance to Carrie, “we think we might as well give up the flat and store our things.  We’ll be gone for the summer, and it would be a useless expense.  I think we’ll settle a little farther down town when we come back.”

Carrie heard this with genuine sorrow.  She had enjoyed Mrs. Vance’s companionship so much.  There was no one else in the house whom she knew.  Again she would be all alone.

Hurstwood’s gloom over the slight decrease in profits and the departure of the Vances came together.  So Carrie had loneliness and this mood of her husband to enjoy at the same time.  It was a grievous thing.  She became restless and dissatisfied, not exactly, as she thought, with Hurstwood, but with life.  What was it?  A very dull round indeed.  What did she have?  Nothing but this narrow, little flat.  The Vances could travel, they could do the things worth doing, and here she was.  For what was she made, anyhow?  More thought followed, and then tears—­tears seemed justified, and the only relief in the world.

For another period this state continued, the twain leading a rather monotonous life, and then there was a slight change for the worse.  One evening, Hurstwood, after thinking about a way to modify Carrie’s desire for clothes and the general strain upon his ability to provide, said: 

“I don’t think I’ll ever be able to do much with Shaughnessy.”

“What’s the matter?” said Carrie.

“Oh, he’s a slow, greedy ‘mick’!  He won’t agree to anything to improve the place, and it won’t ever pay without it.”

“Can’t you make him?” said Carrie.

“No; I’ve tried.  The only thing I can see, if I want to improve, is to get hold of a place of my own.”

“Why don’t you?” said Carrie.

“Well, all I have is tied up in there just now.  If I had a chance to save a while I think I could open a place that would give us plenty of money.”

“Can’t we save?” said Carrie.

“We might try it,” he suggested.  “I’ve been thinking that if we’d take a smaller flat down town and live economically for a year, I would have enough, with what I have invested, to open a good place.  Then we could arrange to live as you want to.”

“It would suit me all right,” said Carrie, who, nevertheless, felt badly to think it had come to this.  Talk of a smaller flat sounded like poverty.

“There are lots of nice little flats down around Sixth Avenue, below Fourteenth Street.  We might get one down there.”

“I’ll look at them if you say so,” said Carrie.

“I think I could break away from this fellow inside of a year,” said Hurstwood.  “Nothing will ever come of this arrangement as it’s going on now.”

“I’ll look around,” said Carrie, observing that the proposed change seemed to be a serious thing with him.