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第8章 九重地狱战场！！

　　Carrie related the incidents of the rehearsal, warming up as sheproceeded.

　　Every day he came home early, and at last made no pretence ofgoing anywhere. Winter was no time to look for anything.

　　"I wouldn't like to live in Chicago and him here," she said,thinking of Drouet.

　　"He was going to Wheaton," said Jessica, not noticing the slightput upon her father.

　　He was unconscious of just how much this habit had hold of himuntil one day he found his lips repeating an old answer he hadmade to one of his friends. They were in Fitzgerald and Moy's.It was as if he stood in the door of his elegant little office,comfortably dressed, talking to Sagar Morrison about the value ofSouth Chicago real estate in which the latter was about toinvest.

　　"The safe is open," said a voice. "There is just the leastlittle crack in it. The lock has not been sprung."

　　Hurstwood, warmed and excited, gazed steadily ahead. It was anastonishing experience for him. He had read of these things, butthe reality seemed something altogether new. He was no coward inspirit. The fact that he had suffered this much now ratheroperated to arouse a stolid determination to stick it out. Hedid not recur in thought to New York or the flat. This one tripseemed a consuming thing.

　　A woman should some day write the complete philosophy of clothes.No matter how young, it is one of the things she whollycomprehends. There is an indescribably faint line in the matterof man's apparel which somehow divides for her those who areworth glancing at and those who are not. Once an individual haspassed this faint line on the way downward he will get no glancefrom her. There is another line at which the dress of a man willcause her to study her own. This line the individual at her elbownow marked for Carrie. She became conscious of an inequality.Her own plain blue dress, with its black cotton tape trimmings,now seemed to her shabby. She felt the worn state of her shoes.

　　"Of course I do," she answered.