Carrie felt this to contain, in some way, an aspersion upon her ability.

“You said I did real well in Chicago,” she rejoined.

“You did,” he answered, seeing that he was arousing opposition, “but Chicago isn’t New York, by a big jump.”

Carrie did not answer this at all.  It hurt her.

“The stage,” he went on, “is all right if you can be one of the big guns, but there’s nothing to the rest of it.  It takes a long while to get up.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Carrie, slightly aroused.

In a flash, he thought he foresaw the result of this thing.  Now, when the worst of his situation was approaching, she would get on the stage in some cheap way and forsake him.  Strangely, he had not conceived well of her mental ability.  That was because he did not understand the nature of emotional greatness.  He had never learned that a person might be emotionally—­instead of intellectually—­great.  Avery Hall was too far away for him to look back and sharply remember.  He had lived with this woman too long.

“Well, I do,” he answered.  “If I were you I wouldn’t think of it.  It’s not much of a profession for a woman.”

“It’s better than going hungry,” said Carrie.  “If you don’t want me to do that, why don’t you get work yourself?”

There was no answer ready for this.  He had got used to the suggestion.

“Oh, let up,” he answered.

The result of this was that she secretly resolved to try.  It didn’t matter about him.  She was not going to be dragged into poverty and something worse to suit him.  She could act.  She could get something and then work up.  What would he say then?  She pictured herself already appearing in some fine performance on Broadway; of going every evening to her dressing-room and making up.  Then she would come out at eleven o’clock and see the carriages ranged about, waiting for the people.  It did not matter whether she was the star or not.  If she were only once in, getting a decent salary, wearing the kind of clothes she liked, having the money to do with, going here and there as she pleased, how delightful it would all be.  Her mind ran over this picture all the day long.  Hurstwood’s dreary state made its beauty become more and more vivid.

Curiously this idea soon took hold of Hurstwood.  His vanishing sum suggested that he would need sustenance.  Why could not Carrie assist him a little until he could get something?

He came in one day with something of this idea in his mind.

“I met John B. Drake to-day,” he said.  “He’s going to open a hotel here in the fall.  He says that he can make a place for me then.”

“Who is he?” asked Carrie.

“He’s the man that runs the Grand Pacific in Chicago.”

“Oh,” said Carrie.

“I’d get about fourteen hundred a year out of that.”

“That would be good, wouldn’t it?” she said, sympathetically.