Her face one scarcely noticed for the first moment more than any rosy apple; for oh! her hair!—her hair claimed all the attention a man had to give, did her shining hair falling stately along her cheeks, all over her shoulders, below her waist, beyond her garment—richer, of course, than any possible queen's cloak. The light rippled over it, changing on it all the time, when nothing else in the window appeared to live.
Within the shadow of the shop was discerned a watchful, wrinkled old face, chiefly differing from a parrot's in the slyness of its eyes. Fraisier catching sight of it thought of a witch on guard over a princess enchanted and imprisoned in a glass-case.
The little group in front of Madame Finibald's dispersed, formed anew with other faces many times in the hour; Fraisier remained, his eyes climbing up, sliding down the golden ropes of hair.
At last, though the girl gave no sign, he was made uncomfortable by the sense that she must, even without looking, have seen how long he stood. He inquired timidly of her face. It was informed with a gentle brazenness, fortified to be stared at all the day. Yet there was a suggestion of childishness in its abstracted expression; she wore the sort of look one has seen on the face of a little girl playing at being somebody else far more splendid than herself. A close observer might have suspected that she really thought it rather grand to sit there in the gorgeousness of her hair, and was amused with pretending not to know that a soul looked on.
Fraisier, because her eyes were lowered, found hardihood to stare his fill at her face. He surrendered without struggle before the round cheeks, the short little nose, the good-natured mouth and chin, which, in truth, took more than their just space in the face. But most—oh, still most! delighted him the brown-gold hair that tumbled over her forehead and ears in little curls.
He was realizing from the mutterings of what was left him of a conscience how late it must be getting—he must be taking himself off; he was making long the one minute more he allowed himself, when her pupils slid between the lashes in his direction. He had lost all presence of mind, he could not withdraw his glance. After a second's pause upon his, her eyes slid back to her book and were hidden. Then, without another thought towards duty, he crossed the street to the barber's, from whose window he could see Madame Finibald's; and, coming forth with a smoother face than the rose, entered the little eating-shop next door, from which likewise he could command Madame Finibald's.
He went through the little street every day. He took many atrocious meals in the shop, on the table nearest the window.
On such days as brought perfect weather, the girl in Madame Finibald's would turn very often to the sky a look easily interpreted as longing. Then would Fraisier look up too and sigh. It seemed such a pity, this wasted blue weather.
It seemed such a pity, all this wasted sweetness, he thought in crossing a public garden on his occasional unwilling way to a lecture. The quince-tree blossomed in red; under the cherry were little drifts of scented snow; up out of the vigorous, rested earth were flowers springing in mad, gay multitudes. The air was silver made air in the morning; and in the afternoon it was gold made air. Birds, busily building, busily twittered. These things did nothing to him, but the more they were lovely and penetrated the heart, the more to make him lonesome.
He took himself away from their radiance without one regret for them, to spend his time in preference in an ugly little street where one could scarcely have known what season it was, where there was nothing to see that was beautiful but certain long, long hair. In thought, though, let it be said in vindication of spring's power of enthralling, having done up the hair in braids, and extinguished it with a hat, he was always, always guiding it to the contemned garden. When once it was in the garden, May there had become perfect.