"Forgotten all these many years, and now here, like the dead come to
life!" murmured Mrs. Haile, abstractedly. "How strange!"
"It was said he bought it for his mother, because it looked so like
himself as a child," said Miss Hopkins. Then she remembered her
duty, held up two fingers before her eyes, and squinted through them
critically:
"Charming, but don't you think the pose strained? It's an example of
eighteenth-century work, placid enough, but it lacks that plastic,
fluidic serenity, that divine new touch of truth, that is
revivifying art since the great Rodin lighted the torch anew."
Heaven knows what else she said. It sounded like a paper on art to
me, and I have a terror of papers on art. They are, Alicia informs
me, purple piffle. Yet Alicia drank in every word Miss Hopkins
uttered, though the dimple came and went in her cheek.
"You seem interested in art, Miss Gaines." Having torn the poor
little peasant Love to tatters, Miss Hopkins descended to us
groundlings.
"I don't always seem to know what art is," admitted Alicia,
dovelike.
The lady who "moved among us clothed in white samite" smiled
encouragingly.
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