" Did you see that women who went by just now?” he said to Carrie on the first day they took a walk together. " Fine stepper, wasn’t she?”

Carrie looked, and observed the grace commended.

" Yes, she is” she returned, cheerfully, a little suggestion of possible defect in herself awakening in her mind.  If that was so fine, she must look at it more closely.  Instinctively, she felt a desire to imitate it.  Surely she could do that too.

When one of her mind sees many things emphasized and reemphasized and admired, she gathers the logic of it and applies accordingly.  Drouet was not shrewd enough to see that this was not tactful.  He could not see that it would be better to make her feel that she was competing with herself, not others better than herself.  He would not have done it with an older, wiser woman, but in Carrie he saw only the novice.  Less clever than she, he was naturally unable to comprehend her sensibility.  He went on educating and wounding her, a thing rather foolish in one whose admiration for his pupil and victim was apt to grow.

Carrie took the instructions affably.  She saw what Drouet liked; in vague way she saw where he was weak.  It lessens a woman’s opinion of a man when she learns that his admiration is so pointedly and generously distributed.  She sees but one object of supreme compliment in this world, and that is herself.  If a man is to succeed with many women, he went he must be all in all to each.

In her own apartments Carrie saw things that were lessons in the same school.

In the same house with her live an official of one of the Theatres, Mr. Frank A. Hale, manager of the Standard, and his wife, a pleasing-looking brunette of thirty-five.  They were people of a sort very common in America today, who live respectably from hand to mouth.  Her wife, quite attractive affected the feeling of youth, and objected to that sort of home life which means the care of a house and the raising of a family.  Like Drouet and Carrie, they also occupied three rooms on the floor above.  Not long after she arrived Mrs. Hale established social relations with her, and together they went about.  For a long time this was her only companionship, and the gossip of the manager’s wife formed the medium, through which she saw the world.  Such trivialities, such praises of Wealth, such conventional expression of morals as sifted through this passive creature’s mind, fell upon Carrie and for the while confused her.

On the other hand, her own feelings were a corrective influence.  Their constant drag to something better was not to be denied.  By those things which address the heart was she steadily recalled.  In the apartments across the hall were a young girl and her mother.  They were from Evansville, Indiana, the wife and daughter of a railroad treasurer.  The daughter was her to study music, the mother to keep her company.

Carrie did not make their acquaintance, but she saw the daughter coming in and going out.  A few times she had seen her a the piano in the parlor, and not infrequently had heard her play.  This young woman was particularly dressy for her station, and wore a jeweled ring or two which flashed upon her white fingers as she played.