alization. She displayed, under his nose, the only kind of figure
he considered worth looking at--that of a very young girl, supple and
sinuous and quicksilverish; thin, eager shoulders, polished white
arms that were nowhere too fat and nowhere too thin. McKann found it
agreeable to look at Kitty, but when he saw that the authoritative
Mrs. Post, red as a turkey-cock with opinions she was bursting to impart,
was studying and appraising the singer through her lorgnette, he gazed
indifferently out into the house again. He felt for his watch, but his
wife touched him warningly with her elbow--which, he noticed, was not at
all like Kitty's.

When Miss Ayrshire finished her first group of songs, her audience
expressed its approval positively, but guardedly. She smiled bewitchingly
upon the people in front, glanced up at the balconies, and then turned to
the company huddled on the stage behind her. After her gay and careless
bows, she retreated toward the stage door. As she passed McKann, she
again brushed lightly against him, and this time she paused long enough
to glance down at him and murmur, "Pardon!"

In the moment her bright, curious eyes rested upon him, McKann seemed to
see himself as if she were holding a mirror up before him. He beheld
himself a heavy, solid figure, unsuitably clad for the time and place,
with a florid, square face, well-visored with good living and sane
opinions--an inexpressive countenance. Not a rock face, exactly, but a
kind of pressed-brick-and-cement face, a "business" face upon which years
and feelings had made no mark--in which cocktails might eventually blast
out a few hollows. He had never seen himself so distinctly in his
shaving-glass as he did in that instant when Kitty Ayrshire's liquid eye
held him, when her bright, inquiring glance roamed over his person. After
her prehensile train curled over his boot and she was gone, his wife
turned to him and said in the tone of approbation one uses when an infant
manifests its groping intelligence, "Very gracious of her, I'm sure!"
Mrs. Post nodded oracularly. McKann grunted.

Kitty began her second number, a group of romantic German songs which
were altogether more her affair than her first number. When she turned
once to acknowledge the applause behind her, she caught McKann in the act
of yawning behind his hand--he of course wore no gloves--and he thought
she frowned a little. This did not embarrass him; it somehow made him
feel important.