will open
his hotel this month?"

"I think so," returned Hurstwood. "He said he would."

After a while, Hurstwood said:

"Don't worry about it. Maybe the grocer will wait. He can do that. We've
traded there long enough to make him trust us for a week or two."

"Do you think he will?" she asked.

"I think so." On this account, Hurstwood, this very day, looked grocer
Oeslogge clearly in the eye as he ordered a pound of coffee, and said:

"Do you mind carrying my account until the end of every week?"

"No, no, Mr. Wheeler," said Mr. Oeslogge. "Dat iss all right."

Hurstwood, still tactful in distress, added nothing to this. It seemed
an easy thing. He looked out of the door, and then gathered up his
coffee when ready and came away. The game of a desperate man had begun.

Rent was paid, and now came the grocer. Hurstwood managed by paying out
of his own ten and collecting from Carrie at the end of the week. Then
he delayed a day next time settling with the grocer, and so soon had his
ten back, with Oeslogge getting his pay on this Thursday or Friday for
last Saturday's bill.

This entanglement made Carrie anxious for a change of some sort.
Hurstwood did not seem to realise that she had a right to anything. He
schemed to make what she earned cover all expenses, but seemed not to
trouble over adding anything himself.

"He talks about worrying," thought Carrie. "If he worried enough he
couldn't sit there and wait for me. He'd get something to do. No man
could go seven months without finding something if he tried."

The sight of him always around in his untidy clothes and gloomy
appearance drove Carrie to seek relief in other places. Twice a week
there were matinees, and then Hurstwood ate a cold snack, which he
prepared himself. Two other days there were rehearsals beginning at ten
in the morning and lasting usually until one. Now, to this Carrie added
a few visits to one or two chorus girls, including the blue-eyed soldier
of the golden helmet. She did it because it was pleasant and a relief
from dulness of the home over which her husband brooded.

The blue-eyed soldier's name was Osborne--Lola Osborne. Her room was
in Nineteenth Street near Fourth Avenue, a block now given up wholly to
office buildings. Here she had a comfortable back room, looking over a
collection of back yards in which grew a number of shade trees pleasant
to see.

"Isn't your home in New York?" she asked of Lola one day.

"Yes; but I c