," he continued, "how a simple technique, like making a good
cigar or a good mummy, can be lost once it's been perfected. Always
seems to be though. Each age has its secrets. You can't make wine now
like the ancient Greeks did."

"As," Mimi interpolated. "As the Greeks did."

"I hate to be bombastic," Donald answered her, "not to say dogmatic or
pedagogical, or impecunious too, for that matter, at least in this
particular day and age, but I believe my original adjectival usage to be
the correct one."

"If your thought had called for an adjective," Mimi countered, "but
properly, according to the accepted grammar of the present day, that is,
you should have used an adverb."

"Whatchamacallit tastes good _like_ a dum-dum cigarette should," Victor
put in, in an attempt to settle the subject.

"That's ridiculous," Donald answered, "it's completely wrong."

"I _know_ it's wrong," Victor cried, "that's the point, _every_body
knows it's--"

"Of course it is," Mimi agreed. "Why on earth _should_ a cigarette taste
good? Who says it should? If one wants to taste something good, why then
one takes a bite of cake, or a smidgin of candy, or a plate of cold
borscht. If one cares for borscht. But you certainly don't smoke a
cigarette to taste something good, they all taste horrible. Horribly? Oh
damn, look what you started, Donald. Now I can't think straight.
Anyhow, people smoke because of the phallic symbolism, right, Victor?"

Donald looked with distaste from Mimi to the big black cigar he was
holding in his right hand, and thence to Victor for a denial. Victor,
however, shrugged his shoulders, and murmured something to the effect
that this consideration might possibly have some bearing on the subject,
that it was really a matter of interest more to the applied
psychologists and advertising men than to the pure scientist or doctor,
and that even so it didn't necessarily follow that--

"You're hedging," Mimi said. "All you have to do is watch a woman smoke
and then watch a man and--"

"I thought we were talking about wine," Donald interrupted, crushing out
his cigar in the oversize marble, or nearly so, ashtray. "What were we
saying about it?"

"You were commenting on the relative excellence of our wines and those
of the Greeks," Victor told him. "I was wondering if perhaps you've
visited them too?"

Donald Fairfield did not answer the query. He stared at Victor
contemplatively, drew in a deep lungful of acrid smoke-fi