He looked so disconsolate that it scared her. She began to see that she herself had been drifting. She had felt it all the time.
“Well, George,” she exclaimed, “why don’t you get out and look for something? You could find something.”
“I have looked,” he said. “You can’t make people give you a place.”
She gazed weakly at him and said: “Well, what do you think you will do? A hundred dollars won’t last long.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I can’t do any more than look.”
Carrie became frightened over this announcement. She thought desperately upon the subject. Frequently she had considered the stage as a door through which she might enter that gilded state which she had so much craved. Now, as in Chicago, it came as a last resource in distress. Something must be done if he did not get work soon. Perhaps she would have to go out and battle again alone.
She began to wonder how one would go about getting a place. Her experience in Chicago proved that she had not tried the right way. There must be people who would listen to and try you—men who would give you an opportunity.
They were talking at the breakfast table, a morning or two later, when she brought up the dramatic subject by saying that she saw that Sarah Bernhardt was coming to this country. Hurstwood had seen it, too.
“How do people get on the stage, George?” she finally asked, innocently.
“I don’t know,” he said. “There must be dramatic agents.”