She did it with the decision of youth, which judges without consideration the grief of old people, the memories and all the charm of the past, without understanding, and as if they were dead things to be dealt with by reason only. She was only twenty, at once very proud and very sincere; she had an artless confidence in herself, an impetuous nature, and a reputation for beauty only partly justified. Tall, like her mother, and, like her, well made, she had her father's larger features more conformed to the usual Alsatian type--with a tendency to thicken. All the lines of her body were already formed and fully developed. To those who saw her for the first time, Lucienne Oberlé gave the impression of being a young woman rather than a young girl. Her face was extremely open and mobile. When she listened, her eyes--not so large as, and of a lighter green than, her brother's, her eyes and her mouth equally sharp when she smiled--followed the conversation and told her thoughts. She dreamed little. Another charm besides the vivacity of her mind explained her social success: the incomparable brightness of her complexion, of her red lips, the splendour of her fair hair, with its shining tresses of blonde and auburn intermingled, so abundant and so heavy that it broke tortoise-shell combs, escaped from hairpins, and hung down behind in a heavy mass and obliged her to raise her brow, which was enhaloed by the light from it, and gave to Lucienne Oberlé the carriage of a proud young goddess. Her Uncle Ulrich said to her, laughing: "When I kiss you, I think I am kissing a peach growing in the open air." She walked well; she played tennis well; she swam to perfection, and more than once the papers of Baden-Baden had printed the initials of her name in articles in which they spoke of "our best skaters."