On the way he met a comfortable-looking gentleman, coming, clean-shaven, out of a fine barber shop.

“Would you mind giving me a little something?” he asked this man boldly.

The gentleman looked him over and fished for a dime.  Nothing but quarters were in his pocket.

“Here,” he said, handing him one, to be rid of him.  “Be off, now.”

Hurstwood moved on, wondering.  The sight of the large, bright coin pleased him a little.  He remembered that he was hungry and that he could get a bed for ten cents.  With this, the idea of death passed, for the time being, out of his mind.  It was only when he could get nothing but insults that death seemed worth while.

One day, in the middle of the winter, the sharpest spell of the season set in.  It broke gray and cold in the first day, and on the second snowed.  Poor luck pursuing him, he had secured but ten cents by nightfall, and this he had spent for food.  At evening he found himself at the Boulevard and Sixty-seventh Street, where he finally turned his face Bowery-ward.  Especially fatigued because of the wandering propensity which had seized him in the morning, he now half dragged his wet feet, shuffling the soles upon the sidewalk.  An old, thin coat was turned up about his red ears—­his cracked derby hat was pulled down until it turned them outward.  His hands were in his pockets.

“I’ll just go down Broadway,” he said to himself.

When he reached Forty-second Street, the fire signs were already blazing brightly.  Crowds were hastening to dine.  Through bright windows, at every corner, might be seen gay companies in luxuriant restaurants.  There were coaches and crowded cable cars.

In his weary and hungry state, he should never have come here.  The contrast was too sharp.  Even he was recalled keenly to better things.  “What’s the use?” he thought.  “It’s all up with me.  I’ll quit this.”

People turned to look after him, so uncouth was his shambling figure.  Several officers followed him with their eyes, to see that he did not beg of anybody.

Once he paused in an aimless, incoherent sort of way and looked through the windows of an imposing restaurant, before which blazed a fire sign, and through the large, plate windows of which could be seen the red and gold decorations, the palms, the white napery, and shining glassware, and, above all, the comfortable crowd.  Weak as his mind had become, his hunger was sharp enough to show the importance of this.  He stopped stock still, his frayed trousers soaking in the slush, and peered foolishly in.

“Eat,” he mumbled.  “That’s right, eat.  Nobody else wants any.”

Then his voice dropped even lower, and his mind half lost the fancy it had.

“It’s mighty cold,” he said.  “Awful cold.”

At Broadway and Thirty-ninth Street was blazing, in incandescent fire, Carrie’s name.  “Carrie Madenda,” it read, “and the Casino Company.”  All the wet, snowy sidewalk was bright with this radiated fire.  It was so bright that it attracted Hurstwood’s gaze.  He looked up, and then at a large, gilt-framed posterboard, on which was a fine lithograph of Carrie, life-size.