e primary defects of dress
and manner had passed. She was pretty, graceful, rich in the timidity
born of uncertainty, and with a something childlike in her large eyes
which captured the fancy of this starched and conventional poser among
men. It was the ancient attraction of the fresh for the stale. If
there was a touch of appreciation left in him for the bloom and
unsophistication which is the charm of youth, it rekindled now. He
looked into her pretty face and felt the subtle waves of young life
radiating therefrom. In that large clear eye he could see nothing that
his blase nature could understand as guile. The little vanity, if he
could have perceived it there, would have touched him as a pleasant
thing.

"I wonder," he said, as he rode away in his cab, "how Drouet came to win
her."

He gave her credit for feelings superior to Drouet at the first glance.

The cab plopped along between the far-receding lines of gas lamps on
either hand. He folded his gloved hands and saw only the lighted chamber
and Carrie's face. He was pondering over the delight of youthful beauty.

"I'll have a bouquet for her," he thought. "Drouet won't mind." He
never for a moment concealed the fact of her attraction for himself.
He troubled himself not at all about Drouet's priority. He was merely
floating those gossamer threads of thought which, like the spider's,
he hoped would lay hold somewhere. He did not know, he could not guess,
what the result would be.

A few weeks later Drouet, in his peregrinations, encountered one of his
well-dressed lady acquaintances in Chicago on his return from a short
trip to Omaha. He had intended to hurry out to Ogden Place and surprise
Carrie, but now he fell into an interesting conversation and soon
modified his original intention.

"Let's go to dinner," he said, little recking any chance meeting which
might trouble his way.

"Certainly," said his companion.

They visited one of the better restaurants for a social chat. It was
five in the afternoon when they met; it was seven-thirty before the last
bone was picked.

Drouet was just finishing a little incident he was relating, and his
face was expanding into a smile, when Hurstwood's eye caught his own.
The latter had come in with several friends, and, seeing Drouet and some
woman, not Carrie, drew his own conclusion.

"Ah, the rascal," he thought, and then, with a touch of righteous
sympathy, "that's pretty hard on the little girl."

Drouet j