hree mornings later.

"He does?"

"Yes; this is the second," answered Carrie.

Hurstwood frowned. Then in despair he got out his purse.

"It seems an awful lot to pay for rent," he said.

He was nearing his last hundred dollars.

Chapter XXXVII. THE SPIRIT AWAKENS--NEW SEARCH FOR THE GATE

It would be useless to explain how in due time the last fifty dollars
was in sight. The seven hundred, by his process of handling, had only
carried them into June. Before the final hundred mark was reached he
began to indicate that a calamity was approaching.

"I don't know," he said one day, taking a trivial expenditure for meat
as a text, "it seems to take an awful lot for us to live."

"It doesn't seem to me," said Carrie, "that we spend very much."

"My money is nearly gone," he said, "and I hardly know where it's gone
to."

"All that seven hundred dollars?" asked Carrie.

"All but a hundred."

He looked so disconsolate that it scared her. She began to see that she
herself had been drifting. She had felt it all the time.

"Well, George," she exclaimed, "why don't you get out and look for
something? You could find something."

"I have looked," he said. "You can t make people give you a place."

She gazed weakly at him and said: "Well, what do you think you will do?
A hundred dollars won't last long."

"I don't know," he said. "I can't do any more than look."

Carrie became frightened over this announcement. She thought desperately
upon the subject. Frequently she had considered the stage as a door
through which she might enter that gilded state which she had so much
craved. Now, as in Chicago, it came as a last resource in distress.
Something must be done if he did not get work soon. Perhaps she would
have to go out and battle again alone.

She began to wonder how one would go about getting a place. Her
experience in Chicago proved that she had not tried the right way. There
must be people who would listen to and try you--men who would give you
an opportunity.

They were talking at the breakfast table, a morning or two later, when
she brought up the dramatic subject by saying that she saw that Sarah
Bernhardt was coming to this country. Hurstwood had seen it, too.

"How do people get on the stage, George?" she finally asked, innocently.

"I don't know," he said. "There must be dramatic agents."

Carrie was sipping coffee, and did not look up.

"Regular people who get you a place?"

"Yes, I think