Hurstwood gazed at it a moment, snuffling and hunching one shoulder, as if something were scratching him.  He was so run down, however, that his mind was not exactly clear.

He approached that entrance and went in.

“Well?” said the attendant, staring at him.  Seeing him pause, he went over and shoved him.  “Get out of here,” he said.

“I want to see Miss Madenda,” he said.

“You do, eh?” the other said, almost tickled at the spectacle.  “Get out of here,” and he shoved him again.  Hurstwood had no strength to resist.

“I want to see Miss Madenda,” he tried to explain, even as he was being hustled away.  “I’m all right.  I——­”

The man gave him a last push and closed the door.  As he did so, Hurstwood slipped and fell in the snow.  It hurt him, and some vague sense of shame returned.  He began to cry and swear foolishly.

“God damned dog!” he said.  “Damned old cur,” wiping the slush from his worthless coat.  “I—­I hired such people as you once.”

Now a fierce feeling against Carrie welled up—­just one fierce, angry thought before the whole thing slipped out of his mind.

“She owes me something to eat,” he said.  “She owes it to me.”

Hopelessly he turned back into Broadway again and slopped onward and away, begging, crying, losing track of his thoughts, one after another, as a mind decayed and disjointed is wont to do.

It was truly a wintry evening, a few days later, when his one distinct mental decision was reached.  Already, at four o’clock, the somber hue of night was thickening the air.  A heavy snow was falling—­a fine picking, whipping snow, borne forward by a swift wind in long, thin lines.  The streets were bedded with it-six inches of cold, soft carpet, churned to a dirty brown by the crush of teams and the feet of men.  Along Broadway men picked their way in ulsters and umbrellas.  Along the Bowery, men slouched through it with collars and hats pulled over their ears.  In the former thoroughfare businessmen and travelers were making for comfortable hotels.  In the latter, crowds on cold errands shifted past dingy stores, in the deep recesses of which lights were already gleaming.  There were early lights in the cable cars, whose usual clatter was reduced by the mantle about the wheels.  The whole city was muffled by this fast-thickening mantle.

In her comfortable chambers at the Waldorf, Carrie was reading at this time “Pere Goriot,” which Ames had recommended to her.  It was so strong, and Ames’s mere recommendation had so aroused her interest, that she caught nearly the full sympathetic significance of it.  For the first time, it was being borne in upon her how silly and worthless had been her earlier reading, as a whole.  Becoming wearied, however, she yawned and came to the window, looking out upon the old winding procession of carriages rolling up Fifth Avenue.

“Isn’t it bad?” she observed to Lola.