ing so much power and the
inability to use it.

The poor girl thrilled as she walked away from Drouet. She felt ashamed
in part because she had been weak enough to take it, but her need was so
dire, she was still glad. Now she would have a nice new jacket! Now she
would buy a nice pair of pretty button shoes. She would get stockings,
too, and a skirt, and, and--until already, as in the matter of her
prospective salary, she had got beyond, in her desires, twice the
purchasing power of her bills.

She conceived a true estimate of Drouet. To her, and indeed to all the
world, he was a nice, good-hearted man. There was nothing evil in the
fellow. He gave her the money out of a good heart--out of a realisation
of her want. He would not have given the same amount to a poor young
man, but we must not forget that a poor young man could not, in
the nature of things, have appealed to him like a poor young girl.
Femininity affected his feelings. He was the creature of an inborn
desire. Yet no beggar could have caught his eye and said, "My God,
mister, I'm starving," but he would gladly have handed out what was
considered the proper portion to give beggars and thought no more about
it. There would have been no speculation, no philosophising. He had no
mental process in him worthy the dignity of either of those terms. In
his good clothes and fine health, he was a merry, unthinking moth of the
lamp. Deprived of his position, and struck by a few of the involved and
baffling forces which sometimes play upon man, he would have been as
helpless as Carrie--as helpless, as non-understanding, as pitiable, if
you will, as she.

Now, in regard to his pursuit of women, he meant them no harm, because
he did not conceive of the relation which he hoped to hold with them as
being harmful. He loved to make advances to women, to have them succumb
to his charms, not because he was a cold-blooded, dark, scheming
villain, but because his inborn desire urged him to that as a chief
delight. He was vain, he was boastful, he was as deluded by fine
clothes as any silly-headed girl. A truly deep-dyed villain could
have hornswaggled him as readily as he could have flattered a pretty
shop-girl. His fine success as a salesman lay in his geniality and the
thoroughly reputable standing of his house. He bobbed about among men,
a veritable bundle of enthusiasm--no power worthy the name of intellect,
no thoughts worthy the adjective noble, no feelings long continu