It was the first reference he had made to that subject, and now she realised how bad off she was. In his crude way he had struck the key-note. Her lips trembled a little. She had her hand out on the table before her. They were quite alone in their corner, and he put his larger, warmer hand over it. “Aw, come, Carrie,” he said, “what can you do alone? Let me help you.” He pressed her hand gently and she tried to withdraw it. At this he held it fast, and she no longer protested. Then he slipped the greenbacks he had into her palm, and when she began to protest, he whispered: “I’ll loan it to you—that’s all right. I’ll loan it to you.” He made her take it. She felt bound to him by a strange tie of affection now. They went out, and he walked with her far out south toward Polk Street, talking. “You don’t want to live with those people?” he said in one place, abstractedly. Carrie heard it, but it made only a slight impression. “Come down and meet me to-morrow,” he said, “and we’ll go to the matinée. Will you?” Carrie protested a while, but acquiesced. “You’re not doing anything. Get yourself a nice pair of shoes and a jacket.” She scarcely gave a thought to the complication which would trouble her when he was gone. In his presence, she was of his own hopeful, easy-way-out mood. “Don’t you bother about those people out there,” he said at parting. “I’ll help you.” Carrie left him, feeling as though a great arm had slipped out before her to draw off trouble. The money she had accepted was two soft, green, handsome ten-dollar bills. Chapter VII. THE LURE OF THE MATERIAL: BEAUTY SPEAKS FOR ITSELF The true meaning of money yet remains to be popularly explained and comprehended. When each individual realises for himself that this thing primarily stands for and should only be accepted as a moral due—that it should be paid out as honestly stored energy, and not as a usurped privilege—many of our social, religious, and political troubles will have permanently passed. As for Carrie, her understanding of the moral significance of money was the popular understanding, nothing more. The old definition: “Money: something everybody else has and I must get,” would have expressed her understanding of it thoroughly. Some of it she now held in her hand—two soft, green ten-dollar bills—and she felt that she was immensely better off for the having of them. It was something that was power in itself. One of her order of mind would have been content to be cast away upon a desert island with a bundle of money, and only the long strain of starvation would have taught her that in some cases it could have no value. Even then she would have had no conception of the relative value of the thing; her one thought would, undoubtedly, have concerned the pity of having so much power and the inability to use it.