Kitty nodded, and Tevis sat watching her indolently while he debated how much of his story he ought not to tell her.  Kitty liked being looked at by intelligent persons.  She knew exactly how good looking she was; and she knew, too, that, pretty as she was, some of those rather sallow women in the Simon painting had a kind of beauty which she would never have.  This knowledge, Tevis was thinking, this important realization, contributed more to her loveliness than any other thing about her; more than her smooth, ivory skin or her changing grey eyes, the delicate forehead above them, or even the dazzling smile, which was gradually becoming too bright and too intentional,—­out in the world, at least.  Here by her own fire she still had for her friends a smile less electric than the one she flashed from stages.  She could still be, in short, intime, a quality which few artists keep, which few ever had.

Kitty broke in on her friend’s meditations.

“You may smoke.  I had rather you did.  I hate to deprive people of things they like.”

“No, thanks.  May I have those chocolates on the tea-table?  They are quite as bad for me.  May you?  No, I suppose not.”  He settled himself by the fire, with the candy beside him, and began in the agreeable voice which always soothed his listener.

“As I said, it was a long while ago, when you first came back to this country and were singing at the Manhattan.  I dropped in at the Metropolitan one evening to hear something new they were trying out.  It was an off night, no pullers in the cast, and nobody in the boxes but governesses and poor relations.  At the end of the first act two people entered one of the boxes in the second tier.  The man was Siegmund Stein, the department-store millionaire, and the girl, so the men about me in the omnibus box began to whisper, was Kitty Ayrshire.  I didn’t know you then, but I was unwilling to believe that you were with Stein.  I could not contradict them at that time, however, for the resemblance, if it was merely a resemblance, was absolute, and all the world knew that you were not singing at the Manhattan that night.  The girl’s hair was dressed just as you then wore yours.  Moreover, her head was small and restless like yours, and she had your colouring, your eyes, your chin.  She carried herself with the critical indifference one might expect in an artist who had come for a look at a new production that was clearly doomed to failure.  She applauded lightly.  She made comments to Stein when comments were natural enough.  I thought, as I studied her face with the glass, that her nose was a trifle thinner than yours, a prettier nose, my dear Kitty, but stupider and more inflexible.  All the same, I was troubled until I saw her laugh,—­and then I knew she was a counterfeit.  I had never seen you laugh, but I knew that you would not laugh like that.  It was not boisterous; indeed, it was consciously refined,—­mirthless, meaningless.  In short, it was not the laugh of one whom our friends in there”—­pointing to the Simon painting—­“would honour with their affection and admiration.”