"Not long after that I met Dan Leland, a classmate of mine, at the
Harvard Club. He's a journalist, and he used to keep such eccentric hours
that I had not run across him for a long time. We got to talking about
modern French music, and discovered that we both had a very lively
interest in Kitty Ayrshire.

"'Could you tell me,' Dan asked abruptly, 'why, with pretty much all the
known world to choose her friends from, this young woman should flit
about with Siegmund Stein? It prejudices people against her. He's a most
objectionable person.'

"'Have you,' I asked, 'seen her with him, yourself?'

"Yes, he had seen her driving with Stein, and some of the men on his
paper had seen her dining with him at rather queer places down town.
Stein was always hanging about the Manhattan on nights when Kitty sang. I
told Dan that I suspected a masquerade. That interested him, and
he said he thought he would look into the matter. In short, we both
agreed to look into it. Finally, we got the story, though Dan could never
use it, could never even hint at it, because Stein carries heavy
advertising in his paper.

"To make you see the point, I must give you a little history of Siegmund
Stein. Any one who has seen him never forgets him. He is one of the most
hideous men in New York, but it's not at all the common sort of ugliness
that comes from over-eating and automobiles. He isn't one of the fat
horrors. He has one of those rigid, horselike faces that never tell
anything; a long nose, flattened as if it had been tied down; a scornful
chin; long, white teeth; flat cheeks, yellow as a Mongolian's; tiny,
black eyes, with puffy lids and no lashes; dingy, dead-looking
hair--looks as if it were glued on.

"Stein came here a beggar from somewhere in Austria. He began by working
on the machines in old Rosenthal's garment factory. He became a speeder,
a foreman, a salesman; worked his way ahead steadily until the hour when
he rented an old dwelling-house on Seventh Avenue and began to make
misses' and juniors' coats. I believe he was the first manufacturer to
specialize in those particular articles. Dozens of garment manufacturers
have come along the same road, but Stein is like none of the rest of
them. He is, and always was, a personality. While he was still at the
machine, a hideous, underfed little whippersnapper, he was already a
youth of many-coloured ambitions, deeply concerned about his dress, his
associates, his recreations. He haun