hing that women love in themselves,
grace. At this, their own shrine, he knelt with them, an ardent devotee.

"Did you see that woman 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 re-emphasized 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 a
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
must be all in all to each.

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

In the same house with her lived 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. Hale received
a salary of forty-five dollars a week. His 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 prais