Gora has a slight sense of humor,
you have quite a keen one, but mine is positively fiendish....Oh, Lord!"
Miss Halsey was trailing them, her hand resting lightly on the arm of
another woman.
"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.
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