whatever to do with it."

"Then who did have to do with it? Tell me; I should like to know exactly
how even one of them originated."

"Will you be comfortable and quiet and not get into a rage, and let me
look at you as much as I please?"

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
yo