They cleaned up after the meal, and, while the thin light lasted, sought out their sleeping places for the night and spread the blankets. Both were ineffably weary, for even Charmian’s pack was a heavy one. But the warmth of the leaping fire that they now built up from the red cooking coals soothed their aching joints and muscles and made existence rosier. They sat one on either side of it, and Shonto rolled and lighted a cigarette to be drawn upon between sips of hot black coffee. “I’ll take one too, please,” said Charmian. “I don’t often smoke, but I know how; and it seems to me that, with only us two away out here in the land of nowhere, I ought to smoke to keep you company. Do you approve of women smoking, Doctor?” “Never before having had any women to be solicitous about,” replied Shonto thoughtfully, as he rolled her cigarette, “I have never given the subject much thought.” He arose and handed her the rolled cylinder. She accepted it a bit awkwardly and ran the tip of her pink tongue along the edge of the paper to moisten it. With the toe of his heavy high-laced boot he scraped a burning twig from the fire and supplied her with a light. “Women who smoke not being looked upon with favour,” he remarked, as he squatted over his coffee cup again, “strikes me as only another example of the slavery to which woman has been subjected from the beginning of history. Laying aside any harm that may come from the practice, why shouldn’t she smoke? It may stain her teeth and work havoc with her digestive apparatus, but her teeth and digestive apparatus are identical with man’s. So we can’t justly prohibit her from smoking on those grounds. The smoking woman is looked upon with disfavour, then, merely because tradition has it that she cannot smoke and remain in the good graces of conservative society. To the bourgeois mind, she is not a lady. Now, the act of smoking is in itself absolutely no more unmoral than spinning a top. If men derived pleasure from top-spinning, doubtless women would be permitted to likewise enjoy themselves. Men eat candy, and women may do so too without losing caste. Just why they can’t smoke without getting in bad is beyond me.”