Chicago, New York; Drouet, Hurstwood; the world of fashion and the world of stage--these were but incidents.Not them, but that which they represented, she longed for.Time proved the representation false.
Oh, the tangle of human life! How dimly as yet we see.Here was Carrie, in the beginning poor, unsophisticated.emotional;
responding with desire to everything most lovely in life, yet finding herself turned as by a wall.Laws to say: "Be allured, if you will, by everything lovely, but draw not nigh unless by righteousness." Convention to say: "You shall not better your situation save by honest labour." If honest labour be unremunerative and difficult to endure; if it be the long, long road which never reaches beauty, but wearies the feet and the heart; if the drag to follow beauty be such that one abandons the admired way, taking rather the despised path leading to her dreams quickly, who shall cast the first stone? Not evil, but longing for that which is better, more often directs the steps of the erring.Not evil, but goodness more often allures the feeling mind unused to reason.
Amid the tinsel and shine of her state walked Carrie, unhappy.
As when Drouet took her, she had thought: "Now I am lifted into that which is best"; as when Hurstwood seemingly offered her the better way: "Now am I happy." But since the world goes its way past all who will not partake of its folly, she now found herself alone.Her purse was open to him whose need was greatest.In her walks on Broadway, she no longer thought of the elegance of the creatures who passed her.Had they more of that peace and beauty which glimmered afar off, then were they to be envied.
Drouet abandoned his claim and was seen no more.Of Hurstwood's death she was not even aware.A slow, black boat setting out from the pier at Twenty-seventh Street upon its weekly errand bore, with many others, his nameless body to the Potter's Field.