The rooms were comfortably enough furnished.  There was good Brussels carpet on the floor, rich in dull red and lemon shades, and representing large jardinières filled with gorgeous, impossible flowers.  There was a large pier-glass mirror between the two windows.  A large, soft, green, plush-covered couch occupied one corner, and several rocking-chairs were set about.  Some pictures, several rugs, a few small pieces of bric-a-brac, and the tale of contents is told.

In the bedroom, off the front room, was Carrie’s trunk, bought by Drouet, and in the wardrobe built into the wall quite an array of clothing-more than she had ever possessed before, and of very becoming designs.  There was a third room for possible use as a kitchen, where Drouet had Carrie establish a little portable gas stove for the preparation of small lunches, oysters, Welsh rarebits, and the like, of which he was exceedingly fond; and, lastly a bath.  The whole place was cozy, in that it was lighted by gas and heated by furnace registers, possessing also a small grate, set with an asbestos back, a method of cheerful warming which was then first coming into use.  By her industry and natural love of order, which now developed, the place maintained an air pleasing in the extreme.

Here, then, was Carrie, established in a pleasant fashion, free of certain difficulties which most ominously confronted her, laden with many new ones which were of a mental order, and altogether so turned about in all of her earthly relationships that she might well have been a new and different individual.  She looked into her glass and saw a prettier Carrie than she had seen before; she looked into her mind, a mirror prepared of her own and the world’s opinions, and saw a worse.  Between these two images she wavered, hesitating which to believe.

" My, but you’re a little beauty,” Drouet was went to exclaim to her.

She would look at him with large, pleased eyes.

" You know it, don’t you?” he would continue.

" Oh, I don’t know,” she would reply, feeling delight in the fact that one should think so, hesitating to believe, though she really did, that she was vain enough to think so much of herself.

Her conscience, however, was not a Drouet, interested to praise.  There she heard a different voice, with which she argued, pleaded, excused.  It was no just and sapient counselor, in its last analysis.  It was only an average little conscience, habit, convention, in a confused way.  With it, the voice of the people was truly the voice of God

" Oh, thou failure!” said the voice.

" Why?” she questioned.

" Look at those about,” came the whispered answer. " Look at those who are good.  How would they scorn to do what you have done.  Look at the good girls; how will they draw away from such as you when they know you have been weak.  You had not tried before you failed.”