New Orleans had gone into the making of Mimi. There was in her too something of the grace of the languorous waves of the Gulf of Mexico as they lapped the jagged shores of Barataria. In her too was the luxuriousness of tropic plants bursting into startlingly vivid and beautiful reds and yellows and greens and blues. Her reddish hair in the sunlight was a magnet that caught and held the eye, the mind meanwhile feasting on its brilliant decorativeness.
And in combination with these reminders of tropic warmth and colour was Mimi’s air, piquant, vaguely mysterious and seductive. Not that she was aware of all this, nor did she do other than laugh when Hilda compared her to some other girl, always to the disparagement of the other one. There were other pretty ones—several of them, in fact, more beautiful than Mimi. Yet, none of them possessed the combination which was hers and, not having lived in Atlanta all her life and thus newer to the eye, Mimi without apparent volition drew to her side most of the younger men. And the eyes of even the older ones she drew to her, covered, if the wife of the beholder was at his side, by a studiously casual remark like “That little Daquin girl is certainly a pretty child!” …