gasp; the horned growth on his hands must have been half an inch thick
when he died. But Her hands were soft, and her mother's hands, and her
brothers'. This last came to him as a surprise; it was tremendously
indicative of the highness of their caste, of the enormous distance that
stretched between her and him.

He sat back on the bed with a bitter laugh, and finished taking off his
shoes. He was a fool; he had been made drunken by a woman's face and by
a woman's soft, white hands. And then, suddenly, before his eyes, on the
foul plaster-wall appeared a vision. He stood in front of a gloomy
tenement house. It was night-time, in the East End of London, and before
him stood Margey, a little factory girl of fifteen. He had seen her home
after the bean-feast. She lived in that gloomy tenement, a place not fit
for swine. His hand was going out to hers as he said good night. She
had put her lips up to be kissed, but he wasn't going to kiss her.
Somehow he was afraid of her. And then her hand closed on his and
pressed feverishly. He felt her callouses grind and grate on his, and a
great wave of pity welled over him. He saw her yearning, hungry eyes,
and her ill-fed female form which had been rushed from childhood into a
frightened and ferocious maturity; then he put his arms about her in
large tolerance and stooped and kissed her on the lips. Her glad little
cry rang in his ears, and he felt her clinging to him like a cat. Poor
little starveling! He continued to stare at the vision of what had
happened in the long ago. His flesh was crawling as it had crawled that
night when she clung to him, and his heart was warm with pity. It was a
gray scene, greasy gray, and the rain drizzled greasily on the pavement
stones. And then a radiant glory shone on the wall, and up through the
other vision, displacing it, glimmered Her pale face under its crown of
golden hair, remote and inaccessible as a star.