But this was peering behind the scenes, and he was supposed to be watching the play.  The entertainment was another “musical comedy” like the one he had seen a few nights before.  On that occasion, however, Bertie Stuyvesant’s sister had talked to him the whole time, while now he was let alone, and had a chance to watch the performance.

This was a very popular play; it had had a long run, and the papers told how its author had an income of a couple of hundred thousand dollars a year.  And here was an audience of the most rich and influential people in the city; and they laughed and clapped, and made it clear that they were enjoying themselves heartily.  And what sort of a play was it?

It was called “The Kaliph of Kamskatka.”  It had no shred of a plot; the Kaliph had seventeen wives, and there was an American drummer who wanted to sell him another—­but then you did not need to remember this, for nothing came of it.  There was nothing in the play which could be called a character—­there was nothing which could be connected with any real emotion ever felt by human beings.  Nor could one say that there was any incident—­at least nothing happened because of anything else.  Each event was a separate thing, like the spasmodic jerking in the face of an idiot.  Of this sort of “action” there was any quantity—­at an instant’s notice every one on the stage would fall simultaneously into this condition of idiotic jerking.  There was rushing about, shouting, laughing, exclaiming; the stage was in a continual uproar of excitement, which was without any reason or meaning.  So it was impossible to think of the actors in their parts; one kept thinking of them as human beings—­thinking of the awful tragedy of full-grown men and women being compelled by the pressure of hunger to dress up and paint themselves, and then come out in public and dance, stamp, leap about, wring their hands, make faces, and otherwise be “lively.”

The costumes were of two sorts:  one fantastic, supposed to represent the East, and the other a kind of reductio ad absurdum of fashionable garb.  The leading man wore a “natty” outing-suit, and strutted with a little cane; his stock-in-trade was a jaunty air, a kind of perpetual flourish, and a wink that suggested the cunning of a satyr.  The leading lady changed her costume several times in each act; but it invariably contained the elements of bare arms and bosom and back, and a skirt which did not reach her knees, and bright-coloured silk stockings, and slippers with heels two inches high.  Upon the least provocation she would execute a little pirouette, which would reveal the rest of her legs, surrounded by a mass of lace ruffles.  It is the nature of the human mind to seek the end of things; if this woman had worn a suit of tights and nothing else, she would have been as uninteresting as an underwear advertisement in a magazine; but this incessant not-quite-revealing of herself exerted a subtle fascination.  At frequent