however. He was thinking his own thoughts, and they were
wretched.

The progress of the play did not improve matters for him.
Carrie, from now on, was easily the centre of interest. The
audience, which had been inclined to feel that nothing could be
good after the first gloomy impression, now went to the other
extreme and saw power where it was not. The general feeling
reacted on Carrie. She presented her part with some felicity,
though nothing like the intensity which had aroused the feeling
at the end of the long first act.

Both Hurstwood and Drouet viewed her pretty figure with rising
feelings. The fact that such ability should reveal itself in
her, that they should see it set forth under such effective
circumstances, framed almost in massy gold and shone upon by the
appropriate lights of sentiment and personality, heightened her
charm for them. She was more than the old Carrie to Drouet. He
longed to be at home with her until he could tell her. He
awaited impatiently the end, when they should go home alone.

Hurstwood, on the contrary, saw in the strength of her new
attractiveness his miserable predicament. He could have cursed
the man beside him. By the Lord, he could not even applaud
feelingly as he would. For once he must simulate when it left a
taste in his mouth.

It was in the last act that Carrie's fascination for her lovers
assumed its most effective character.