some fine performance on Broadway; of going every evening
to her dressing-room and making up. Then she would come out at eleven
o'clock and see the carriages ranged about, waiting for the people. It
did not matter whether she was the star or not. If she were only once
in, getting a decent salary, wearing the kind of clothes she liked,
having the money to do with, going here and there as she pleased, how
delightful it would all be. Her mind ran over this picture all the day
long. Hurstwood's dreary state made its beauty become more and more
vivid.

Curiously this idea soon took hold of Hurstwood. His vanishing sum
suggested that he would need sustenance. Why could not Carrie assist him
a little until he could get something?

He came in one day with something of this idea in his mind.

"I met John B. Drake to-day," he said. "He's going to open a hotel here
in the fall. He says that he can make a place for me then."

"Who is he?" asked Carrie.

"He's the man that runs the Grand Pacific in Chicago."

"Oh," said Carrie.

"I'd get about fourteen hundred a year out of that."

"That would be good, wouldn't it?" she said, sympathetically.

"If I can only get over this summer," he added, "I think I'll be all
right. I'm hearing from some of my friends again."

Carrie swallowed this story in all its pristine beauty. She sincerely
wished he could get through the summer. He looked so hopeless.

"How much money have you left?"

"Only fifty dollars."

"Oh, mercy," she exclaimed, "what will we do? It's only twenty days
until the rent will be due again."

Hurstwood rested his head on his hands and looked blankly at the floor.

"Maybe you could get something in the stage line?" he blandly suggested.

"Maybe I could," said Carrie, glad that some one approved of the idea.

"I'll lay my hand to whatever I can get," he said, now that he saw her
brighten up. "I can get something."

She cleaned up the things one morning after he had gone, dressed as
neatly as her wardrobe permitted, and set out for Broadway. She did
not know that thoroughfare very well. To her it was a wonderful
conglomeration of everything great and mighty. The theatres were
there--these agencies must be somewhere about.

She decided to stop in at the Madison Square Theatre and ask how to find
the theatrical agents. This seemed the sensible way. Accordingly, when
she reached that theatre she applied to the clerk at the box office.

"Eh?" he said, looki