to
gratify your every desire. It is love that prompts me to write. Will you
not give me one half-hour in which to plead my cause?"

Such of these letters as came while Carrie was still in the Seventeenth
Street place were read with more interest--though never delight--than
those which arrived after she was installed in her luxurious quarters at
the Wellington. Even there her vanity--or that self-appreciation which,
in its more rabid form, is called vanity--was not sufficiently cloyed to
make these things wearisome. Adulation, being new in any form, pleased
her. Only she was sufficiently wise to distinguish between her old
condition and her new one. She had not had fame or money before. Now
they had come. She had not had adulation and affectionate propositions
before. Now they had come. Wherefore? She smiled to think that men
should suddenly find her so much more attractive. In the least way it
incited her to coolness and indifference.

"Do look here," she remarked to Lola. "See what this man says: 'If
you will only deign to grant me one half-hour,'" she repeated, with an
imitation of languor. "The idea. Aren't men silly?"

"He must have lots of money, the way he talks," observed Lola. "That's
what they all say," said Carrie, innocently.

"Why don't you see him," suggested Lola, "and hear what he has to say?"

"Indeed I won't," said Carrie. "I know what he'd say. I don't want to
meet anybody that way."

Lola looked at her with big, merry eyes.

"He couldn't hurt you," she returned. "You might have some fun with
him."

Carrie shook her head.

"You're awfully queer," returned the little, blue-eyed soldier.

Thus crowded fortune. For this whole week, though her large salary had
not yet arrived, it was as if the world understood and trusted her.
Without money--or the requisite sum, at least--she enjoyed the luxuries
which money could buy. For her the doors of fine places seemed to open
quite without the asking. These palatial chambers, how marvellously they
came to her. The elegant apartments of Mrs. Vance in the Chelsea--these
were hers. Men sent flowers, love notes, offers of fortune. And still
her dreams ran riot. The one hundred and fifty! the one hundred and
fifty! What a door to an Aladdin's cave it seemed to be. Each day, her
head almost turned by developments, her fancies of what her fortune must
be, with ample money, grew and multiplied. She conceived of delights
which were not--saw lights of joy that