ce me to run away with you for?"

Her voice became almost a sob.

"Force!" he said, with curled lip. "A lot of forcing I did."

"Oh!" said Carrie, breaking under the strain, and turning. "Oh, oh!" and
she hurried into the front room.

Hurstwood was now hot and waked up. It was a great shaking up for him,
both mental and moral. He wiped his brow as he looked around, and then
went for his clothes and dressed. Not a sound came from Carrie; she
ceased sobbing when she heard him dressing. She thought, at first, with
the faintest alarm, of being left without money--not of losing him,
though he might be going away permanently. She heard him open the top of
the wardrobe and take out his hat. Then the dining-room door closed, and
she knew he had gone.

After a few moments of silence, she stood up, dry-eyed, and looked out
the window. Hurstwood was just strolling up the street, from the flat,
toward Sixth Avenue.

The latter made progress along Thirteenth and across Fourteenth Street
to Union Square.

"Look for work!" he said to himself. "Look for work! She tells me to get
out and look for work."

He tried to shield himself from his own mental accusation, which told
him that she was right.

"What a cursed thing that Mrs. Vance's call was, anyhow," he thought.
"Stood right there, and looked me over. I know what she was thinking."

He remembered the few times he had seen her in Seventy-eight Street. She
was always a swell-looker, and he had tried to put on the air of being
worthy of such as she, in front of her. Now, to think she had caught him
looking this way. He wrinkled his forehead in his distress.

"The devil!" he said a dozen times in an hour.

It was a quarter after four when he left the house. Carrie was in tears.
There would be no dinner that night.

"What the deuce," he said, swaggering mentally to hide his own shame
from himself. "I'm not so bad. I'm not down yet."

He looked around the square, and seeing the several large hotels,
decided to go to one for dinner. He would get his papers and make
himself comfortable there.

He ascended into the fine parlour of the Morton House, then one of the
best New York hotels, and, finding a cushioned seat, read. It did not
trouble him much that his decreasing sum of money did not allow of such
extravagance. Like the morphine fiend, he was becoming addicted to his
ease. Anything to relieve his mental distress, to satisfy his craving
for comfort. He must do it. No