McKann, who stared coldly up at the balconies during her first song, during the second glanced cautiously at the green apparition before him.  He was vexed with her for having retained a debutante figure.  He comfortably classed all singers—­especially operatic singers—­as “fat Dutchwomen” or “shifty Sadies,” and Kitty would not fit into his clever generalization.  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.  When she retired after the second part of the program, she again looked him over curiously as she passed, and she took marked precaution that her dress did not touch him.  Mrs. Post and his wife again commented upon her consideration.