She was watching me curiously, smilingly, as she sat there, her devilishly pretty mouth puckered into a cherry as she softly whistled and drummed her shining nails upon the chair arm.
"I'm afraid I've shocked you," she said. "Jack says you're so good."
Dash it, somehow I felt humiliated! She said it in a way that made me feel like a silly ass, you know.
But she wasn't thinking about me any more. Her eye fell on the tabouret, and her little hand stretched toward it.
"May I?" she said with an arch inquiring glance. "Your cigarettes look good to me. I emptied my case an hour ago."
And I proffered them with a show of alacrity. "Pray, pardon me," I said. "I--I never thought of you smoking." A chuckle came through the tiny teeth grasping the cigarette. "Thought I was too goody-goody, eh?"
I stammered something--dashed if I know what--and blinked a little gloomily as she drew a brisk fire from the flame I tendered.
Odd thing, by Jove; here I had been going to dinners, world without end, where fellows' wives and girls and sisters smoked cigarettes, and I never had thought a thing about it. But now, somehow, I didn't like it for _her_. Sort of thing well enough for other chaps' girls and sisters, you know, but--well, this was _different_, by Jove! Devilish queer thing, that, what a lot of things seem the caper for them that we don't like for "our own," eh?
And yet--oh, I say, she certainly did look fetching about it--downright bewitching, you know! I think maybe it was because she didn't fumble the thing as if she was afraid of it--as if it was just a red hot coal and going to burn her. Most of them do, you know. No, this girl really seemed to enjoy it. Inhaled the whole thing at three draws and reached for another.
"Do--er--you smoke much?" I ventured anxiously. "Cigarettes, you know?"
She pulled a sparkling half-inch as she shook her little head. I felt awfully relieved. "Not for me," she remarked carelessly. "I prefer a pipe."
The golden head inclined. "Bet you! Good old, well-seasoned brier for mine--well-caked and a little strong." Puff-puff. "Oh, damn your patent sanitary pipes, I say!"
And as backward I collapsed upon the cushions, she threw her leg over the arm of her chair and shot two long cones of smoke from her dainty nostrils.