he half-hours, the minutes of
the world; what miseries and griefs are crowded into them!

She said good-bye with feigned indifference. What matter could it make?
Still, the coach seemed lorn.

When she went into her own flat she had this to think about. She did not
know whether she would ever see this man any more. What difference could
it make--what difference could it make?

Hurstwood had returned, and was already in bed. His clothes were
scattered loosely about. Carrie came to the door and saw him, then
retreated. She did not want to go in yet a while. She wanted to think.
It was disagreeable to her.

Back in the dining-room she sat in her chair and rocked. Her little
hands were folded tightly as she thought. Through a fog of longing and
conflicting desires she was beginning to see. Oh, ye legions of hope and
pity--of sorrow and pain! She was rocking, and beginning to see.

Chapter XXXIII. WITHOUT THE WALLED CITY--THE SLOPE OF THE YEARS

The immediate result of this was nothing. Results from such things
are usually long in growing. Morning brings a change of feeling. The
existent condition invariably pleads for itself. It is only at odd
moments that we get glimpses of the misery of things. The heart
understands when it is confronted with contrasts. Take them away and the
ache subsides.

Carrie went on, leading much this same life for six months thereafter or
more. She did not see Ames any more. He called once upon the Vances, but
she only heard about it through the young wife. Then he went West,
and there was a gradual subsidence of whatever personal attraction had
existed. The mental effect of the thing had not gone, however, and never
would entirely. She had an ideal to contrast men by--particularly men
close to her.

During all this time--a period rapidly approaching three
years--Hurstwood had been moving along in an even path. There was no
apparent slope downward, and distinctly none upward, so far as the
casual observer might have seen. But psychologically there was a change,
which was marked enough to suggest the future very distinctly indeed.
This was in the mere matter of the halt his career had received when he
departed from Chicago. A man's fortune or material progress is very much
the same as his bodily growth. Either he is growing stronger, healthier,
wiser, as the youth approaching manhood, or he is growing weaker, older,
less incisive mentally, as the man approaching old age. There are no