Page:In a winter city, by Ouida.djvu/102

Rh her perfect in face and form, and gifted her with intelligence, and Fashion had made her useless, tired, and vaguely cynical about everything, as everybody else was in her world; except that yet larger number who resembled Madame Mila—a worse type still, according to his view.

It was a pity that the coldness and corruption of the great world had entered thus deeply into her; so he thought, watching the droop of her long eyelashes, the curve of her beautiful mouth, the even coming and going of her breath under her shining necklace of opals and emeralds.

He began to believe that the Duc was right. There was no "past" in that calmest of indolent glances.

"You smoke, Madame?" he said, a little abruptly to her, after dinner.

She looked at her slender roll of paper.

"It is a habit—like all the rest of the things one does. I do not care about it."

"Why do it then? Are you not too proud to follow a habit, and imitate a folly?"

She smiled a little, and let the cigarette pale its ineffectual fires and die out.