Then he turned and saw the papers.  With half a sigh he picked up the “World.”

“Strike Spreading in Brooklyn,” he read.  “Rioting Breaks Out in all Parts of the City.”

He adjusted his paper very comfortably and continued.  It was the one thing he read with absorbing interest.

Chapter XLII A TOUCH OF SPRING—­THE EMPTY SHELL

Those who look upon Hurstwood’s Brooklyn venture as an error of judgment will none the less realize the negative influence on him of the fact that he had tried and failed.  Carrie got a wrong idea of it.  He said so little that she imagined he had encountered nothing worse than the ordinary roughness—­quitting so soon in the face of this seemed trifling.  He did not want to work.

She was now one of a group of oriental beauties who, in the second act of the comic opera, were paraded by the vizier before the new potentate as the treasures of his harem.  There was no word assigned to any of them, but on the evening when Hurstwood was housing himself in the loft of the street-car barn, the leading comedian and star, feeling exceedingly facetious, said in a profound voice, which created a ripple of laughter: 

“Well, who are you?”

It merely happened to be Carrie who was curtsying before him.  It might as well have been any of the others, so far as he was concerned.  He expected no answer and a dull one would have been reproved.  But Carrie, whose experience and belief in herself gave her daring, curtsied sweetly again and answered: 

“I am yours truly.”

It was a trivial thing to say, and yet something in the way she did it caught the audience, which laughed heartily at the mock fierce potentate towering before the young woman.  The comedian also liked it, hearing the laughter.

“I thought your name was Smith,” he returned, endeavoring to get the last laugh.

Carrie almost trembled for her daring after she had said this.  All members of the company had been warned that to interpolate lines or “business” meant a fine or worse.  She did not know what to think.

As she was standing in her proper position in the wings, awaiting another entry, the great comedian made his exit past her and paused in recognition.

“You can just leave that in hereafter,” he remarked, seeing how intelligent she appeared.  “Don’t add any more, though.”

“Thank you,” said Carrie, humbly.  When he went on she found herself trembling violently.

“Well, you’re in luck,” remarked another member of the chorus.  “There isn’t another one of us has got a line.”

There was no gainsaying the value of this.  Everybody in the company realized that she had got a start.  Carrie hugged herself when next evening the lines got the same applause.  She went home rejoicing, knowing that soon something must come of it.  It was Hurstwood who, by his presence, caused her merry thoughts to flee and replaced them with sharp longings for an end of distress.