The contrast was too sharp.Even he was recalled keenly to better things.
"What's the use?" he thought."It's all up with me.I'll quit this."
People turned to look after him, so uncouth was his shambling figure.Several officers followed him with their eyes, to see that he did not beg of anybody.
Once he paused in an aimless, incoherent sort of way and looked through the windows of an imposing restaurant, before which blazed a fire sign, and through the large, plate windows of which could be seen the red and gold decorations, the palms, the white napery, and shining glassware, and, above all, the comfortable crowd.Weak as his mind had become, his hunger was sharp enough to show the importance of this.He stopped stock still, his frayed trousers soaking in the slush, and peered foolishly in.
"Eat," he mumbled."That's right, eat.Nobody else wants any."
Then his voice dropped even lower, and his mind half lost the fancy it had.
"It's mighty cold," he said."Awful cold."
At Broadway and Thirty-ninth Street was blazing, in incandescent fire, Carrie's name."Carrie Madenda," it read, "and the Casino Company." All the wet, snowy sidewalk was bright with this radiated fire.It was so bright that it attracted Hurstwood's gaze.He looked up, and then at a large, gilt-framed posterboard, on which was a fine lithograph of Carrie, lifesize.
Hurstwood gazed at it a moment, snuffling and hunching one shoulder, as if something were scratching him.He was so run down, however, that his mind was not exactly clear.
He approached that entrance and went in.
"Well?" said the attendant, staring at him.Seeing him pause, he went over and shoved him."Get out of here," he said.
"I want to see Miss Madenda," he said.
"You do, eh?" the other said, almost tickled at the spectacle.
"Get out of here," and he shoved him again.Hurstwood had no strength to resist.
"I want to see Miss Madenda," he tried to explain, even as he was being hustled away."I'm all right.I----"
The man gave him a last push and closed the door.As he did so, Hurstwood slipped and fell in the snow.It hurt him, and some vague sense of shame returned.He began to cry and swear foolishly.