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PinkMonkey Digital Library-Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser


"Well, we’ll see about that. It seems to me you’re trying to run
things with a pretty high hand of late. You talk as though you
settled my affairs for me. Well,

you don’t. You don’t regulate anything that’s connected with me.
If you want to go, go, but you won’t hurry me by any such talk as
that."

He was thoroughly aroused now. His dark eyes snapped, and he
crunched his paper as he laid it down. Mrs. Hurstwood said
nothing more. He was just finishing when she turned on her heel
and went out into the hall and upstairs. He paused for a moment,
as if hesitating, then sat down and drank a little coffee, and
thereafter arose and went for his hat and gloves upon the main
floor.

His wife had really not anticipated a row of this character. She
had come down to the breakfast table feeling a little out of sorts
with herself and revolving a scheme which she had in her mind.
Jessica had called her attention to the fact that the races were not
what they were supposed to be. The social opportunities were not
what they had thought they would be this year. The beautiful girl
found going every day a dull thing. There was an earlier exodus
this year of people who were anybody to the watering places and
Europe. In her own circle of acquaintances several young men in
whom she was interested had gone to Waukesha. She began to
feel that she would like to go too, and her mother agreed with her.

Accordingly, Mrs. Hurstwood decided to broach the subject. She
was thinking this over when she came down to the table, but for
some reason the atmosphere was wrong. She was not sure, after it
was all over, just how the trouble had begun. She was determined
now, however, that her husband was a brute, and that, under no
circumstances, would she let this go by unsettled. She would have
more lady-like treatment or she would know why.

For his part, the manager was loaded with the care of this new
argument until he reached his office and started from there to
meet Carrie. Then the other complications of love, desire, and
opposition possessed him. His thoughts fled on before him upon
eagles’ wings. He could hardly wait until he should meet Carrie
face to face. What was the night, after all, without her-what the
day? She must and should be his.

For her part, Carrie had experienced a world of fancy and feeling
since she had left him, the night before. She had listened to
Drouet’s enthusiastic maunderings with much regard for that part
which concerned herself, with very little for that which affected
his own gain. She kept him at such lengths as she could, because
her thoughts were with her own triumph. She felt Hurstwood’s
passion as a delightful background to her own achievement, and
she wondered what he would have to say. She was sorry for him,
too, with that peculiar sorrow which finds something
complimentary to itself in the misery of another. She was now
experiencing the first shades of feeling of that subtle change
which removes one out of the ranks of the suppliants into the lines
of the dispensers of charity. She was, all in all, exceedingly
happy.

On the morrow, however, there was nothing in the papers
concerning the event, and, in view of the flow of common,
everyday things about, it now lost a shade of the glow of the
previous evening. Drouet himself was not talking so much of as
for her. He felt instinctively that, for some reason or other, he
needed reconstruction in her regard.

"I think," he said, as he spruced around their chambers the next
morning, preparatory to going down town, "that I’ll straighten out
that little deal of mine this month and then we’ll get married. I
was talking with Mosher about that yesterday."

"No, you won’t," said Carrie, who was coming to feel a certain
faint power to jest with the drummer.

"Yes, I will," he exclaimed, more feelingly than usual, adding,
with the tone of one who pleads, "Don’t you believe what I’ve
told you?"

Carrie laughed a little.

"Of course I do," she answered.
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PinkMonkey Digital Library-Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser



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