Page:JM Barrie--My lady nicotine.djvu/170

164 streaming down her neck and shoulders), and comes most unexpectedly upon him. He is young. The senior, over whose face "a smile flickers for a moment" when the heroine says something naive, and whom she (entirely misunderstanding her feelings) thinks she hates, smokes unostentatiously; but though a little inclined to quiet "chaff," he is a man of deep feeling. By and by he will open out and gather her up in his arms. The scorner's chair is filled. I see him, shadow-like, a sad-eyed, blasé gentleman, who has been adored by all the beauties of fifteen seasons, and yet speaks of woman with a contemptuous sneer. Great, however, is love; and the vulgar little girl who talks slang will prove to him in our next volume that there is still one peerless beyond all others of her sex. Ah, a wondrous thing is love! On every side of me there are dark, handsome men, with something sinister in their smile, "casting away their cigars with a muffled curse." No novel would be complete without them. When they are foiled by the brave girl of the narrative, it is the recognized course with them to fling away their cigars with a muffled curse. Any kind of curse would do, but muffled ones are preferred.