He felt instinctively that, for some reason or other, he needed reconstruction in her regard.
"I think," he said, as he spruced around their chambers the next morning, preparatory to going down town, "that I'll straighten out that little deal of mine this month and then we'll get married.

I was talking with Mosher about that yesterday." "No, you won't," said Carrie, who was coming to feel a certain faint power to jest with the drummer.
"Yes, I will," he exclaimed, more feelingly than usual, adding, with the tone of one who pleads, "Don't you believe what I've told you ?" Carrie laughed a little.
"Of course I do," she answered.
Drouet's assurance now misgave him.

Shallow as was his mental observation, there was that in the things which had happened which made his little power of analysis useless.

Carrie was still with him, but not helpless and pleading.

There was a lilt in her voice which was new.