“I thought,” he said, looking at Carrie, “I would come around and tell you how well you did, Mrs. Drouet. It was delightful.” Carrie took the cue, and replied: “Oh, thank you.” “I was just telling her,” put in Drouet, now delighted with his possession, “that I thought she did fine.” “Indeed you did,” said Hurstwood, turning upon Carrie eyes in which she read more than the words. Carrie laughed luxuriantly. “If you do as well in the rest of the play, you will make us all think you are a born actress.” Carrie smiled again. She felt the acuteness of Hurstwood’s position, and wished deeply that she could be alone with him, but she did not understand the change in Drouet. Hurstwood found that he could not talk, repressed as he was, and grudging Drouet every moment of his presence, he bowed himself out with the elegance of a Faust. Outside he set his teeth with envy. “Damn it!” he said, “is he always going to be in the way?” He was moody when he got back to the box, and could not talk for thinking of his wretched situation. As the curtain for the next act arose, Drouet came back. He was very much enlivened in temper and inclined to whisper, but Hurstwood pretended interest. He fixed his eyes on the stage, although Carrie was not there, a short bit of melodramatic comedy preceding her entrance. He did not see what was going on, 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.