to the full as perfectly as pain.

The foot, with its articulations, is suppressed, and its language
confused. When Lovelace likens the hand of Amarantha to a violin, and
her glove to the case, he has at any rate a glove to deal with, not a
boot. Yet Amarantha's foot is as lovely as her hand. It, too, has a
"tender inward"; no wayfaring would ever make it look anything but
delicate; its arch seems too slight to carry her through a night of
dances; it does, in fact, but balance her. It is fit to cling to the
ground, but rather for springing than for rest.

And, doubtless, for man, woman, and child the tender, irregular,
sensitive, living foot, which does not even stand with all its little
surface on the ground, and which makes no base to satisfy an
architectural eye, is, as it were, the unexpected thing. It is a part of
vital design and has a history; and man does not go erect but at a price
of weariness and pain. How weak it is may be seen from a footprint: for
nothing makes a more helpless and unsymmetrical sign than does a naked
foot.

Tender, too, is the silence of human feet. You have but to pass a season
amongst the barefooted to find that man, who, shod, makes so much ado, is
naturally as silent as snow. Woman, who not only makes her armed heel
heard, but also goes rustling like a shower, is naturally silent as snow.
The vintager is not heard among the vines, nor the harvester on his
threshing-floor of stone. There is a kind of simple stealth in their
coming and going, and they show sudden smiles and dark eyes in and out of
the rows of harvest when you thought yourself alone. The lack of noise
in their movement sets free the sound of their voices, and their laughter
floats.