Читать книгу Sister Carrie / Сестра Кэрри. Книга для чтения на английском языке онлайн | страница 62

Drouet shared in the conversation, but he was almost dull in comparison. Hurstwood entertained them both, and now it was driven into Carrie’s mind that here was the superior man. She instinctively felt that he was stronger and higher, and yet withal so simple. By the end of the third act she was sure that Drouet was only a kindly soul, but otherwise defective. He sank every moment in her estimation by the strong comparison.

“I have had such a nice time,” said Carrie, when it was all over and they were coming out.

“Yes, indeed,” added Drouet, who was not in the least aware that a battle had been fought and his defenses weakened. He was like the Emperor of China, who sat glorying in himself, unaware that his fairest provinces were being wrested from him.

“Well, you have saved me a dreary evening,” returned Hurstwood. “Good-night.”

He took Carrie’s little hand, and a current of feeling swept from one to the other.

“I’m so tried,” said Carrie, leaning back in the car when Drouet began to talk.

“Well, you rest a little while I smoke,” he said, rising and then he foolishly went to the forward platform of the car and left the game as it stood.

Mrs. Hurstwood was not aware of any of her husband’s moral defections, though she might readily have suspected his tendencies, which she well understood. She was a woman upon whose action under provocation you could never count. Hurstwood, for one, had not the slightest idea of what she would do under certain circumstances. He had never seen her thoroughly aroused. In fact, she was not a woman who would fly into a passion. She had too little faith in mankind not to know that they were erring. She was too calculating to jeopardize any advantage she might gain in the way of information by fruitless clamor. Her wrath would never wreak itself in one fell blow. She would wait and brood, studying the details and adding to them until her power might be commensurate with her desire for revenge. At the same time, she would not delay to inflict any injury, big or little, which would wound the object of her revenge and still leave him uncertain as to the source of the evil. She was a cold, self-centered woman, with many a thought of her own which never found expression, not even by so much as the glint of an eye.