"Now this is something like," whispered Aileen. "Witch of Endor got up to look like Carmen."
The oncoming luminary was a singular-looking woman who may have been considerably less so in the privacy of her dressing-room; she had evidently expended much thought upon supplementing the niggardliness of Nature. Her unwashed-looking black hair was dressed very high and stuck with immense pins. Large, circular, highly colored, imitation jade rings dangled in tiers from her ear-lobes, and at least eight rows of colored beads covered the front of her loose, fringed, embroidered, beaded gown. She had a haggard face, deeply lined and badly painted, but something, an emanation perhaps, seemed to proclaim that she was still young.
"This, dear Mrs. Dwight and Miss Lawton, is Alma De Quincey Smith, with whose work you are of course familiar. She had her reception last week but was only too glad to come to-night and extend the welcoming hand of the east to our new daughter of the west."
Miss De Quincey Smith barely gave her time to finish. She darted forward and grasped Aileen's hand. "Oh, you must let me tell you how wonderful I think your unique green eyes go with that jade. I've been watching you!" She spoke with the eager unthinking impulsiveness of a child, which, oddly, made her look like a very old woman.
"Too nice of you," murmured Aileen, who was determined to behave.
"And you!" she cried, turning to Alexina. "Your eyes simply blaze. You look like a long white arum lily. And dusky hair, not merely black. Oh, I do think you are both too wonderful, and I am sure all these splendid artists here will want to paint you."
Alexina and Aileen were not accustomed to such spontaneous and unbridled admiration and they thought Miss Smith quite fascinating if rather queer. But Miss Smith did not number tact among her gifts and rushed on.
"Gora Dwight is too wonderful looking for words. We are all crazy over her. All the artists want to paint her already. Her coloring and style are unique and she suggests tragedy—with those marvelous pale eyes in that dark face—those heavy dark brows and heavy masses of hair. I have suggested that Folkes—your greatest portrait painter, you know,—paint her as Medea, or as the Genius of the Revolution, How proud you must be of her!"
"So we are," murmured Aileen. "We think she is the only woman writer in
America worth mentioning. Why don't you paint her yourself?"
"I? I am not an artist—with the brush! I am an author, Alma De Quincey
Smith."