othing better than to pose as the
monster in the fresco."

"There she is," said Paul. "Every one is turning round to look at her."

The unknown blushed, her eyes shone; she saw Henri, she shut them and
passed by.

"You say that she notices you?" cried Paul, facetiously.

The duenna looked fixedly and attentively at the two young men. When the
unknown and Henri passed each other again, the young girl touched him,
and with her hand pressed the hand of the young man. Then she turned her
head and smiled with passion, but the duenna led her away very quickly
to the gate of the Rue de Castiglione.

The two friends followed the young girl, admiring the magnificent grace
of the neck which met her head in a harmony of vigorous lines, and upon
which a few coils of hair were tightly wound. The girl with the golden
eyes had that well-knitted, arched, slender foot which presents so
many attractions to the dainty imagination. Moreover, she was shod with
elegance, and wore a short skirt. During her course she turned from
time to time to look at Henri, and appeared to follow the old woman
regretfully, seeming to be at once her mistress and her slave; she
could break her with blows, but could not dismiss her. All that was
perceptible. The two friends reached the gate. Two men in livery let
down the step of a tasteful _coupe_ emblazoned with armorial bearings.
The girl with the golden eyes was the first to enter it, took her seat
at the side where she could be best seen when the carriage turned,
put her hand on the door, and waved her handkerchief in the duennna's
despite. In contempt of what might be said by the curious, her
handkerchief cried to Henri openly: "Follow me!"

"Have you ever seen a handkerchief better thrown?" said Henri to Paul de
Manerville.

Then, observing a fiacre on the point of departure, having just set down
a fare, he made a sign to the driver to wait.

"Follow that carriage, notice the house and the street where it
stops--you shall have ten francs.... Paul, adieu."

The cab followed the _coupe_. The _coupe_ stopped in the Rue Saint
Lazare before one of the finest houses of the neighborhood.

De Marsay was not impulsive. Any other young man would have obeyed his
impulse to obtain at once some information about a girl who realized so
fully the most luminous ideas ever expressed upon women in the poetry
of the East; but, too experienced to compromise his good fortune, he had
told his coachman to continue