. The second time she stared him in the face without flinching, almost forbiddingly, even turning her head as they crossed, to follow him with her look⁠—it went through our poor young friend like a knife. We need not pity him, for was it not all his own doing? But the encounter was gripping at the moment and even more afterwards⁠—for only in retrospect was he clear as to what had actually happened. He had never seen Frau Chauchat’s face so close, so clear in all its details. He could have counted the tiny hairs that stood up from the braid she wore wreathed round her head⁠—they were reddish-blond, with a metallic sheen. No more than a hands-breadth or so of space had been between his face and hers, whose outline and features, peculiar though they were, had been familiar to him as long as he could remember, and spoke to his very soul as nothing else could in all the world. It was an unusual face, and full of character (for only the unusual seems to us to have character); its mystery and strangeness spoke of the unknown north, and it teased the curiosity because its proportions and characteristics were somehow not very easy to determine.