“Yes, you ought to learn to smoke,” responded Mr. Corrie judicially. The quiet smile--the serene offer of companionship, the whole room troubled with the sense of the two parties, the men with whom she was linked in the joyous forward going strife of the game and the women on the sofa, suddenly grown monstrous in their opposition of clothes and kindliness and the fuss of distracting personal insincerities of voice and speech attempting to judge and condemn the roomful of quiet players, shouting aloud to her that she was a fool to be drawn in to talking to men seriously on their own level, a fool to parade about as if she really enjoyed their silly game. “I hate women and they’ve got to know it,” she retorted with all her strength, hitting blindly out towards the sofa, feeling all the contrivances of toilet and coiffure fall in meaningless horrible detail under her blows. “I do smoke,” she said, leaving her partner’s side and going boldly to the sofa corner. “Ragbags, bundles of pretence,” she thought, as she confronted the women. They glanced up with cunning eyes. They looked small and cringing. She rushed on, sweeping them aside.... Who had made them so small and cheated, and for all their smiles so angry? What was it they wanted? What was it women wanted that always made them so angry? “Would you mind if I _smoked_?” she asked in a clear gay tone, cutting herself from Mrs. Corrie with a wrench as she faced her glittering frightened eyes. “Of _course_ not, my dear lady--I don’t mind, if you don’t,” she said, tweaking affectionately at Miriam’s skirt. “Ain’t she a gay dog, Mélie, ain’t she a gay dog!” 5 “It’s a pleasure to see you smoke,” murmured Mr. Corrie fervently, “you’re the first woman I’ve seen smoke _con amore_.” Contemplating the little screwed-up appreciative smile on the features of her partner, bunched to the lighting of his own cigarette, Miriam discharged a double stream of smoke violently through her nostrils--breaking out at last a public defiance of the freemasonry of women. “I suppose I’m a new woman--I’ve said I am now, anyhow,” she reflected, wondering in the background of her determination how she would reconcile the rôle with her work as a children’s governess. “I’m not in their crowd, anyhow; I despise their silly secret,” she pursued, feeling out ahead towards some lonely solution of her difficulty that seemed to come shapelessly towards her, but surely--the happy weariness of conquest gave her a sense of some unknown strength in her. For the rest of the evening the group in the sofa-corner presented her a frontage of fawning and flattery. 6