I was vaguely thrilled by this idea, the more because so far in my life I had had no experience of the kind. On the streets, in cabs, and in cafes I began watching women with different eyes, more eagerly selecting eyes that picked out of the throng the one _her_ of the moment so that for me she was quite alone. She was alone for a thousand reasons, different ones in every case. She was of many ages, rich and poor, now gorgeous and now simply dressed, now a ravishing creature that took your breath and again just funny and very French with a saucy way of wearing her clothes. Her fascinations were always new. I watched her twinkling earrings, her trick of using her lips when she smiled, her hands, her silk clad ankles, her swelling young bust, the small coquettish hat she wore, her shoulders, their expressive shrugs, her quick vivacious movements--and I watched her eyes. Her eyes would meet mine now and then, often with only a challenging smile but again in an intimate dazzling way that gave me a deep swift shock of delight and left me confused and excited. "In a little while," I thought. I decided to wait till I knew more French. "She'll be strange enough, God knows," I thought half apprehensively, "even when I can talk her language." And with a feeling almost of relief I would plunge back into my work and forget her. For me she was only an incident in this teeming radiant life. I must learn French! I strained my ears at lectures, at plays from the top gallery, I hired a tutor to hurry it on. Years later in New York I met a Russian revolutionist come to raise money for his cause. "Three weeks have I been in this country," he said in utter exasperation. "And not yet do I speak fluently the English!" That was how I felt about French. What a delight to begin to feel easy, to catch the fine shadings, the music and color of words and of phrases. How much more pliant and smooth and brilliant than English. How remote from the harbor. I could study my models now, not only their construction but their small character touches as well. De Maupassant was still first for me. So simple and sure, with so few strokes but each stroke counting to the full, one suggestive sentence making you imagine the rest, everything else in the world shut out, your mind gripped suddenly and held, focussed on this man and this woman who a moment before had been nothing to you but were now more real than life itself. Especially this woman, what an absorbing creature he made her--and the big human ideas he injected into these petites histoires.