For instance, figure to yourself Miss Martha Hopkins.  She had visited as far north as Atlanta; and she had relatives in Charleston, as she would have condescendingly informed arch-angels, principalities, powers, thrones, and dominions.  But she wasn’t blessed with much of this world’s goods, and most of the time she stayed home and improved her mind.  She took herself with profound seriousness.  She seemed to think that the better part of wisdom consists in knowing who said this and who didn’t say that—­“as Mr. Arnold Bennett expresses it,” “as Mr. H.G.  Wells remarks,” “as Mr. James Huneker writes,”—­she was the only person in all Hyndsville who could write up music and art, and she wasn’t even afraid to use the word sex in its most modern acceptance; though in South Carolina you refer to the ladies as “the fair sex” if you’re a gentleman, and to the gentlemen as “the stronger sex” if you’re a lady.  You understand that “male and female created He them,” and you let it go at that.  Miss Martha Hopkins, then, was daring; she was also exclusive.

I suppose if I had been younger I could have smiled at Miss Martha, as Susy Gatchell and her graceless friends did, but somehow she appeared to me a creature trying to peck at the world and peek at the stars through the bars of a bird-cage.  That’s why, when I met her a morning or two before the Morenas exhibit, I asked her if she wouldn’t like to see it.  I knew that, once asked, she could be kept away by nothing short of an earthquake or a deluge.  Yet—­

“Thank you, Miss Smith, I shall be glad to look over the sketches.”  And she added blandly:  “Four o’clock, did you say?  Very well, I will come.  It is one’s moral duty to encourage men of talent.”

“Whoop!” cried The Author, joyously, when I told him that.  “Revenge yourself, Morenas:  sketch her, man! sketch her!”

Morenas laughed.  “Put her in one of your books and make her talk,” he suggested slyly.  “You have a genius for making a woman talk like an idiot.”

“That’s because he does the talking for her, himself,” said Alicia, impudently.

“It pays, it pays!” smiled The Author.  “I draw from life.”

“Nature-fakir!” Alicia mocked.

“My dear fellow, I draw. You draw and quarter,” said Morenas.

The Author flung out his arms, grandiloquently.

You may as well try to change the course
Of yonder sun
To north, and south,
As to try to subdue by criticism
This heart of verse,
Or close this mouth!

he cried, thumping his chest.  “Come on, Johnson:  let’s leave these knockers to fate—­and Miss Martha Hopkins!”

Miss Martha Hopkins came, she saw, and she had a perfectly beautiful time.  As a matter of fact, everybody that could come, did come.  And the very smartest and prettiest of the younger set served tea.  Oh, yes, decidedly the tables were turning!

Despite which, Alicia and I were not happy.  It seemed to me that a veil had fallen between us, for we were shy with each other.  Both suffered, and each dreaded that the other should know.