“Why didn’t you?” she asked, without looking up.
“You never asked me,” he returned.
She went hunting aimlessly through the crowded columns. Her mind was distracted by this man’s indifference. The difficulty of the situation she was facing was only added to by all he did. Self-commiseration brewed in her heart. Tears trembled along her eyelids but did not fall. Hurstwood noticed something.
“Let me look.”
To recover herself she went into the front room while he searched. Presently she returned. He had a pencil, and was writing upon an envelope.
“Here’re three,” he said.
Carrie took it and found that one was Mrs. Bermudez, another Marcus Jenks, a third Percy Weil. She paused only a moment, and then moved toward the door.
“I might as well go right away,” she said, without looking back.
Hurstwood saw her depart with some faint stirrings of shame, which were the expression of a manhood rapidly becoming stultified. He sat a while, and then it became too much. He got up and put on his hat.
“I guess I’ll go out,” he said to himself, and went, strolling nowhere in particular, but feeling somehow that he must go.