d ponderously, pausing at each landing to examine the
damage.

Harmony, having sung Jimmy to sleep, was in the throes of an experiment.
She was trying to smoke.

A very human young person was Harmony, apt to be exceedingly wretched
if her hat were of last year's fashion, anxious to be inconspicuous by
doing what every one else was doing, conventional as are the very young,
fearful of being an exception.

And nearly every one was smoking. Many of the young women whom she met
at the master's house had yellowed fingers and smoked in the anteroom;
the Big Soprano had smoked; Anna and Scatchy had smoked; in the
coffee-houses milliners' apprentices produced little silver mouth-pieces
to prevent soiling their pretty lips and smoked endlessly. Even Peter
had admitted that it was not a vice, but only a comfortable bad habit.
And Anna had left a handful of cigarettes.

Harmony was not smoking; she was experimenting. Peter and Anna had
smoked together and it had looked comradely. Perhaps, without reasoning
it out, Harmony was experimenting toward the end of establishing her
relations with Peter still further on friendly and comradely grounds.
Two men might smoke together; a man and a woman might smoke together
as friends. According to Harmony's ideas, a girl paring potatoes might
inspire sentiment, but smoking a cigarette--never!

She did not like it. She thought, standing before her little mirror,
that she looked fast, after all. She tried pursing her lips together,
as she had seen Anna do, and blowing out the smoke in a thin line. She
smoked very hard, so that she stood in the center of a gray nimbus. She
hated it, but she persisted. Perhaps it grew on one; perhaps, also,
if she walked about it would choke her less. She practiced holding the
thing between her first and second fingers, and found that easier than
smoking. Then she went to the salon where there was more air, and tried
exhaling through her nose. It made her sneeze.

On the sneeze came Mrs. Boyer's ring. Harmony thought very fast. It
might be the bread or the milk, but again--She flung the cigarette into
the stove, shut the door, and answered the bell.

Mrs. Boyer's greeting was colder than she had intended. It put Harmony
on the defensive at once, made her uncomfortable. Like all the innocent
falsely accused she looked guiltier than the guiltiest. Under Mrs.
Boyer's searching eyes the enormity of her situation overwhelmed her.
And over all, through salon and