give money and time and effort to talented students.  Oh, I give something much more than that! something that you probably have never given to any one.  I give, to the really gifted ones, my wish, my desire, my light, if I have any; and that, Mr. Worldly Wiseman, is like giving one’s blood!  It’s the kind of thing you prudent people never give.  That is what was in the box of precious ointment.”  Kitty threw off her fervour with a slight gesture, as if it were a scarf, and leaned back, tucking her slipper up on the edge of his seat.  “If you saw the houses I keep up,” she sighed, “and the people I employ, and the motor-cars I run—­And, after all, I’ve only this to do it with.”  She indicated her slender person, which Marshall could almost have broken in two with his bare hands.

She was, he thought, very much like any other charming woman, except that she was more so.  Her familiarity was natural and simple.  She was at ease because she was not afraid of him or of herself, or of certain half-clad acquaintances of his who had been wandering up and down the car oftener than was necessary.  Well, he was not afraid, either.

Kitty put her arms over her head and sighed again, feeling the smooth part in her black hair.  Her head was small—­capable of great agitation, like a bird’s; or of great resignation, like a nun’s.  “I can’t see why I shouldn’t be self-indulgent, when I indulge others.  I can’t understand your equivocal scheme of ethics.  Now I can understand Count Tolstoy’s, perfectly.  I had a long talk with him once, about his book ‘What is Art?’ As nearly as I could get it, he believes that we are a race who can exist only by gratifying appetites; the appetites are evil, and the existence they carry on is evil.  We were always sad, he says, without knowing why; even in the Stone Age.  In some miraculous way a divine ideal was disclosed to us, directly at variance with our appetites.  It gave us a new craving, which we could only satisfy by starving all the other hungers in us.  Happiness lies in ceasing to be and to cause being, because the thing revealed to us is dearer than any existence our appetites can ever get for us.  I can understand that.  It’s something one often feels in art.  It is even the subject of the greatest of all operas, which, because I can never hope to sing it, I love more than all the others.”  Kitty pulled herself up.  “Perhaps you agree with Tolstoy?” she added languidly.

“No; I think he’s a crank,” said McKann, cheerfully.

“What do you mean by a crank?”

“I mean an extremist.”

Kitty laughed.  “Weighty word!  You’ll always have a world full of people who keep to the golden mean.  Why bother yourself about me and Tolstoy?”

“I don’t, except when you bother me.”

“Poor man!  It’s true this isn’t your fault.  Still, you did provoke it by glaring at me.  Why did you go to the concert?”

“I was dragged.”