ouch 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
cosey, 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 wont 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 counsellor, in its last analysis. It was only an
average little conscience, a thing which represented the world, her past
environment, 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 h