I wish I didn't like to smoke." She lighted one and strolled about the room, knotting up her dark hair, heels clicking sharply over the bare, polished floor.
Lacking a hair-peg, she sauntered off to her own apartments to find one, where she remained, lolling in the chaise-longue, alternately blowing smoke rings into the sunshine and nibbling a bonbon soaked in cologne.
Only a girl can accomplish such combinations.

How she ever began this silly custom of hers she couldn't remember, except that, when a small child, somebody had forbidden her to taste brandied peach syrup, which she adored; and the odour of cologne being similarly pleasant, she had tried it on her palate and found that it produced agreeable sensations.
It had become a habit.

She was conscious of it, but remained indifferent because she didn't know anything about habits.
So all that sunny afternoon she lay in the chaise-longue, alternately reading and dreaming, her scented bonbons at her elbow.

Later a maid brought tea; and a little later Duane Mallett was announced.

He sauntered in, a loosely knit, graceful figure, still wearing his riding-clothes and dusty boots of the morning.
Geraldine Seagrave had had time enough to discover, during the past winter, that her old playfellow was not at all the kind of man he appeared to be.