Ralph again quickened his step. The lady, tall, self-possessed, of noble bearing, set firmly on the pavement an Englishwoman’s feet, which were redeemed by well-shaped legs and slim ankles. Her face was uncommonly pretty, lighted by eyes of a wonderful blue, crowned by a heavy mass of fair hair. Those who passed her half stopped and turned to stare after her. She displayed an utter indifference to this homage of the crowd. “Goodness!” thought Ralph. “What an aristocrat! She deserves something better than that pomaded bounder who is following her. What is he up to? A jealous husband? A jilted lover? Or simply a lady-killer in search of adventure? Yes: that must be it. The fellow wore the air of a man lucky in love who believes himself to be irresistible.” The girl crossed the Place de l’Opera without taking any notice of the vehicles which thronged it. A dray was about to bar her way; she quietly seized the horse’s reins and stopped it. The driver jumped down from his seat in a fury and began to abuse her, thrusting his face into hers. She landed a jolting right hook on his nose that sent the blood gushing out of it. A policeman hurried up and demanded an explanation; she turned her back on him and went quietly on her way. In the Rue Auber two small boys were fighting, she caught them by the scruff of the neck and flung them away from her with such violence that they rolled over and over for a good ten feet. Then she threw a ten-franc note to each of them. On the Boulevard Haussmann she went into a confectioner’s and from a distance Ralph saw her sit down at a table. Since the man who was following her did not enter the shop, he went into it himself and took a seat in a quiet fashion that did not attract her attention to him. She ordered tea and toast which she ate hungrily with magnificent teeth. The people sitting at the neighboring tables stared at her. She took no notice whatever of them. Presently she ordered more toast. But another young woman, sitting at a table further off also excited Ralph’s curiosity. Fair as the English girl, with wavy hair, dressed less expensively but with a Parisienne’s surer taste, she was surrounded by three poorly dressed children, whom she was feeding with cakes and glasses of grenadine. More of a child than the children themselves, she was amusing herself infinitely as she babbled for the three of them. “What was it you said to the young lady?” “Louder ... I did not hear.... No: you shouldn’t call me ‘Madame’. You should say: ‘Thank you, Mademoiselle.’” Ralph was instantly enslaved by two things: the natural gayety of her expression, and the profound seductiveness of her large green eyes, the color of jade, and streaked with gold, from which one could not tear one’s own eyes once one had fixed them on them.