empt.

When McKann had been in Paris, Kitty Ayrshire was singing at the Comique,
and he wouldn't go to hear her--even there, where one found so little
that was better to do. She was too much talked about, too much
advertised; always being thrust in an American's face as if she were
something to be proud of. Perfumes and petticoats and cutlets were named
for her. Some one had pointed Kitty out to him one afternoon when she was
driving in the Bois with a French composer--old enough, he judged, to be
her father--who was said to be infatuated, carried away by her. McKann
was told that this was one of the historic passions of old age. He had
looked at her on that occasion, but she was so befrilled and befeathered
that he caught nothing but a graceful outline and a small, dark head
above a white ostrich boa. He had noted with disgust, however, the
stooped shoulders and white imperial of the silk-hatted man beside her,
and the senescent line of his back. McKann described to his wife this
unpleasing picture only last night, while he was undressing, when he was
making every possible effort to avert this concert party. But Bessie
only looked superior and said she wished to hear Kitty Ayrshire sing, and
that her "private life" was something in which she had no interest.

Well, here he was; hot and uncomfortable, in a chair much too small for
him, with a row of blinding footlights glaring in his eyes. Suddenly the
door at his right elbow opened. Their seats were at one end of the front
row; he had thought they would be less conspicuous there than in the
centre, and he had not foreseen that the singer would walk over him every
time she came upon the stage. Her velvet train brushed against his
trousers as she passed him. The applause which greeted her was neither
overwhelming nor prolonged. Her conservative audience did not know
exactly how to accept her toilette. They were accustomed to dignified
concert gowns, like those which Pittsburgh matrons (in those days!) wore
at their daughters' coming-out teas.

Kitty's gown that evening was really quite outrageous--the repartee of a
conscienceless Parisian designer who took her hint that she wished
something that would be entirely novel in the States. Today, after we
have all of us, even in the uttermost provinces, been educated by Baskt
and the various Ballets Russes, we would accept such a gown without
distrust; but then it was a little disconcerting, even to the
well-disposed. It was