After I had been several months in this beautiful and affluent country, and, whether in the midst of my boys at school or among the people at the theatre, in the circus, or in the café, kept seeing in the women, to whom I paid eager attention, always the same great dark eyes, these eyes began to pall upon me. Why? In Germany, by contrast to our cerulean blue, steel blue, greenish, and iron gray eyes, brown ones had often seemed to me especially beautiful and touched my heart as nothing else could do. Now they bored me. Always the same apparent expression of strength, which goes back to the contrast between the dark pupil and the surrounding white, and in turn between this white and the dusky skin; always, even on the most indifferent occasions, this pregnant glance, this rolling and melting! "Anyhow," I asked myself one day, "why have all these people replaced their human eyes with the eyes of animals?" I began, when on the streets, to look about for light-colored eyes, for glances which had something of the clearness of the sky or the wave in spring time, something of the lustre and translucency of a November mist, something of the keen brilliancy of an ice crystal. I paid attention once more to the people of the Northern Hemisphere, whom heretofore I had avoided, and these people of the North are, of course, mostly Germans.
Now it happened that one morning in those days I was going my way, and, in order to keep in the shade, sticking as closely as might be to the houses. Then out of a low window in the ground floor of one of these houses a hand shot out right before me, holding a dust-cloth, which it was about to shake; and I should naturally have got the full benefit of the operation. With a quick grasp I seized the hand by the wrist; and not until I had so secured myself could I look up to see to whom the hand belonged. The girl stood inclined somewhat forward, leaning on her other hand, and stared at me with great startled eyes, the most transparent, silvery-gleaming eyes that I remember ever to have seen.
I was so surprised that I lost all my audacity; but I still kept a firm hold of her hand. And so she was after all the first to recover her power of speech, and she said, "Pardon me."
"On the contrary, I thank you," I replied, rising on my toes, kissing her hand, and then releasing it.
She made no answer, her expression became troubled, she struggled with herself, her eyes filled with tears, and I felt that I had done violence to an innocent heart. That pained me and I blurted out, "Shake the cloth in my face! I have offended you. It was not my intention; but let me have my punishment."
"Not for the world!" she responded. "How can a man say such a thing!"
I looked at her in amazement and curiosity. Was that meant to be a reprimand? Did she strike a blow and pretend the while to put far away from her any such intention? No. Her eyes beamed appeasement and also appeasingly; surrendering myself to her, I had disarmed her resentment. Nevertheless, I continued, "He who can say such a thing has no right, then, to wear hair on his face? I shall presently go straight to the barber's. I have been so proud of my manliness! But--repulsed with loss! And, to make a clean breast of it, for an opportunity like this I would gladly remain a foolish youth a long while yet; like silly Jack, you know, in the fairy tale, who is always doing foolish things; but the princess with the blue eyes does not think any the worse of him on that account!"
Pricking up her ears and collecting her thoughts, she looked at me half roguishly out of the corner of her eye; then she shook her head with its heavy braids and said, "I do not understand you. You are so comical. You must talk quite simply to me."
She looked so charmingly simple that I forgot my speech and watched her standing there, so youthful and radiant in the window frame, against the dark background of the room. Everything about her was healthful and strong: her figure in the blue washable dress, her round throat, her well formed face, in which eyes and teeth gleamed brightly; but the abundance of her chestnut braids was so heavy that her neck seemed hardly able to support them.
"What sort of follies did silly Jack commit?" she asked when I became silent.