"That's the Ursus look," she laughed softly, as if it pleased her.
A silver cigarette case was on a tabaret within reach of her hand.
"Have a cigarette!" she proposed.
John declined, a trifle embarrassed by the proffer. Miss Dounay lighted one and puffed a small halo above her head before she looked across at him again and asked quizzically:
"You do not smoke?"
"And I do not think women should," Hampstead replied, with level eyes.
"It is a horrid habit," she confessed, "but this business will drive women to do horrid things. Listen, Hampstead. It's hard for a man; you've found that out, and you're only beginning. It's harder for a woman; the despairs, the disappointments, the bitter lonelinesses,—the beasts of men one meets! But—" With a shrug of her shoulders she suddenly broke off her train of thought, and turning an inquiring glance on Hampstead asked:
"You never smoked?"
"Oh, yes," confessed John, "but I quit it. I decided it would not be good for me."
She regarded him narrowly, and asked:
"You would not do a thing which did not appear good for you?"
There was just a little accent on the "good."
"I have tried to calculate my resources," John confessed, resenting that accent.
Again Miss Dounay contemplated him in silence.
"You are a singularly calculating young man, I should say," she decreed finally. "And how long, may I ask, have you been living this calculating life?"
Marien was making a play upon his word "calculate."
