Nabokov writes his wife from Coker College, Hartsville, S. Carolina, October, 1942, by Sarah White.

He sends kisses to his dear sweetheart.  He longs for her urgently.  Evenings on this campus are early and empty, but she mustn’t imagine him running after Creole girls.  The younger women have fiery husbands. The older ones are more the Miss Perkins type, spinsters whose charms don’t tempt him.

The Miss Perkins was my friend and summer neighbor in upstate New York.  As a child,  I would visit her well-appointed cottage to drink ginger ale and discuss literature—The Wind in the Willows or Winnie the Pooh.  She never spoke of being a Wellesley professor.  Nor of the immigrant novelist who taught for a year in her department, failed to get a permanent position, and had to undertake the tedious lecture tour.

A decade later, he inscribed a copy of his memoir, Conclusive Evidence, To my dear friend, Agnes Perkins.  I have the book on my desk.  Under the inscription is a drawing of a butterfly and a message:  This is one of my very best species.

Miss Agnes Perkins was a moth with a boxy body and feathery gray wings, kept folded  during the day.  On summer nights they could be seen clinging to reading lamps, porch-lights, or the Moon.