And nearly every one was smoking. Many of the young women whom
she met at the master's house had yellowed fingers and smoked in
the anteroom; the Big Soprano had smoked; Anna and Scatchy had
smoked; in the coffee-houses milliners' apprentices produced
little silver mouth-pieces to prevent soiling their pretty lips
and smoked endlessly. Even Peter had admitted that it was not a
vice, but only a comfortable bad habit. And Anna had left a
handful of cigarettes.
Harmony was not smoking; she was experimenting. Peter and Anna
had smoked together and it had looked comradely. Perhaps, without
reasoning it out, Harmony was experimenting toward the end of
establishing her relations with Peter still further on friendly
and comradely grounds. Two men might smoke together; a man and a
woman might smoke together as friends. According to Harmony's
ideas, a girl paring potatoes might inspire sentiment, but
smoking a cigarette--never!
She did not like it. She thought, standing before her little
mirror, that she looked fast, after all. She tried pursing her
lips together, as she had seen Anna do, and blowing out the smoke
in a thin line. She smoked very hard, so that she stood in the
center of a gray nimbus. She hated it, but she persisted. Perhaps
it grew on one; perhaps, also, if she walked about it would choke
her less. She practiced holding the thing between her first and
second fingers, and found that easier than smoking.
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