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She spoke frankly, pleasantly, without a shadow of challenge or hauteur. She did not seem to be angling for compliments. McKann settled himself in his seat. He thought he would try her out. She had come for it, and he would let her have it. He found, however, that it was harder to formulate the grounds of his disapproval than he would have supposed. Now that he sat face to face with her, now that she was leaning against his bag, he had no wish to hurt her.

“I’m a hard-headed business man,” he said evasively, “and I don’t much believe in any of you fluffy-ruffles people. I have a sort of natural distrust of them all, the men more than the women.”

She looked thoughtful. “Artists, you mean?” drawing her words slowly. “What is your business?”

“Coal.”

“I don’t feel any natural distrust of business men, and I know ever so many. I don’t know any coal-men, but I think I could become very much interested in coal. Am I larger-minded than you?”

McKann laughed. “I don’t think you know when you are interested or when you are not. I don’t believe you know what it feels like to be really interested. There is so much fake about your profession. It’s an affectation on both sides. I know a great many of the people who went to hear you tonight, and I know that most of them neither know nor care anything about music. They imagine they do, because it’s supposed to be the proper thing.”

Kitty sat upright and looked interested. She was certainly a lovely creature–the only one of her tribe he had ever seen that he would cross the street to see again. Those were remarkable eyes she had–curious, penetrating, restless, somewhat impudent, but not at all dulled by self-conceit.

“But isn’t that so in everything?” she cried. “How many of your clerks are honest because of a fine, individual sense of honour? They are honest because it is the accepted rule of good conduct in business. Do you know”–she looked at him squarely–“I thought you would have something quite definite to say to me; but this is funny-paper stuff, the sort of objection I’d expect from your office-boy.”

“Then you don’t think it silly for a lot of people to get together and pretend to enjoy something they know nothing about?”

“Of course I think it silly, but that’s the way God made audiences. Don’t people go to church in exactly the same way? If there were a spiritual-pressure test-machine at the door, I suspect not many of you would get to your pews.”

“How do you know I go to church?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “Oh, people with these old, ready-made opinions usually go to church. But you can’t evade me like that.” She tapped the edge of his seat with the toe of her gold slipper. “You sat there all evening, glaring at me as if you could eat me alive. Now I give you a chance to state your objections, and you merely criticize my audience. What is it? Is it merely that you happen to dislike my personality? In that case, of course, I won’t press you.”

“No,” McKann frowned, “I perhaps dislike your professional personality. As I told you, I have a natural distrust of your variety.”

“Natural, I wonder?” Kitty murmured. “I don’t see why you should naturally dislike singers any more than I naturally dislike coal-men. I don’t classify people by their occupations. Doubtless I should find some coal-men repulsive, and you may find some singers so. But I have reason to believe that, at least, I’m one of the less repellent.”

“I don’t doubt it,” McKann laughed, “and you’re a shrewd woman to boot. But you are, all of you, according to my standards, light people. You’re brilliant, some of you, but you’ve no depth.”

Kitty seemed to assent, with a dive of her girlish head. “Well, it’s a merit in some things to be heavy, and in others to be light. Some things are meant to go deep, and others to go high. Do you want all the women in the world to be profound?”