Mr. Nicholas Jelnik, whom he managed to meet within the week, aroused The Author’s professional interest.  For once his tried and tested powers of turning other people’s minds inside out failed utterly.  His innocent-sounding queries, his adroit leads, were smilingly turned aside.  The defense, so far as Mr. Jelnik was concerned, was ridiculously simple:  he didn’t want to talk about himself and he didn’t do it.

He was perfectly willing to talk, when the humor seized him, and he did talk, brilliantly, wittily, freely, and impersonally.  The egoistic “I” was conspicuous by its absence.  And while he talked you could see the agile antennae of The Author’s winged mind feeling after the soul-string that might lead him through the mazes of this unusual character.  That he could be deftly diverted filled The Author with chagrin mingled with wonder.

He manoeuvered for an invitation to the gray cottage and secured it with suspicious ease; called, and had a glass of most excellent wine in his host’s simplest of bachelor living-rooms; made the closer acquaintance of Boris—­he didn’t care for dogs—­and of self-contained, dark-faced Daoud, Mr. Jelnik’s East Indian man-servant; and came home dissatisfied and determined.  He scented “copy,” and a born writer after copy is, next to an Apache after a scalp or a Dyak after his enemy’s head, the most ruthless of created beings.  He will pick his mother’s naked soul to pieces, bore into his wife’s living brain, dissect his daughter’s quivering heart, tear across his sister’s mind, rip up his father’s life and his best friend’s character, lay bare the tomb itself, and make for himself an ink of tears and blood that he may write what he finds.  Of such is the kingdom of Genius.

And in the meantime the wondrous news that The Author himself was staying at Hynds House, percolated through Hyndsville and soaked to the bone.  The Author was too big a figure to be ignored, even by South Carolina people.  Something had to be done.  But how shall one become acquainted with a notoriously unfriendly and gun-shy celebrity, a personage of such note that every utterance means newspaper space; and at the same time manage utterly to ignore and cast into outer darkness the people with whom the great one is staying?

The town felt itself put upon its mettle.  The first move was made by Miss Martha Hopkins.  It was understood that if anybody could clear the way, carry a difficult position with skill and aplomb, that somebody was Miss Martha Hopkins.

She didn’t bear down directly upon The Author:  that would have been crude.  She opened her campaign by a flank movement upon Alicia and me, in her capacity of secretary and treasurer of the missionary society.

Miss Hopkins sailed into Hynds House on a perfect afternoon, to discuss with us a proposed rummage-sale which was to benefit the heathen.  She wasn’t really worrying about the heathen:  he had all the rest of his benighted life to get himself saved in, hadn’t he?  All the while she sat there and talked about him, she was really loaded to the muzzle with pertinent remarks to affluent authors.