"Good. The play is on the docket for the evening. Now let us get the taste of the underworld out of our mouths. How would the Claremont appeal now?"
"I'd rather not."
"Well, I suppose that amounts to my congé?"
She smiled with her brows arched.
"It is after eleven."
He was incessantly feeling for his cigarette case and then with a certain unease refraining.
"You may," she said, "one, before you go."
He held the case to her. She took one gingerly, accepting the light more gingerly.
"I don't like them," she said, exhaling with the violence of the unaccustomed.
"Then whyfore?"