But the arms were sunburned, too.
He twisted his arm, rolled the biceps over with his other hand, and gazed underneath where he was least touched by the sun.
It was very white.
He laughed at his bronzed face in the glass at the thought that it was once as white as the underside of his arm; nor did he dream that in the world there were few pale spirits of women who could boast fairer or smoother skins than he-fairer than where he had escaped the ravages of the sun.
His might have been a cherub’s mouth, had not the full, sensuous lips a trick, under stress, of drawing firmly across the teeth.
At times, so tightly did they draw, the mouth became stern and harsh, even ascetic.
They were the lips of a fighter and of a lover.
They could taste the sweetness of life with relish, and they could put the sweetness aside and command life.
The chin and jaw, strong and just hinting of square aggressiveness, helped the lips to command life.
Strength balanced sensuousness and had upon it a tonic effect, compelling him to love beauty that was healthy and making him vibrate to sensations that were wholesome.
And between the lips were teeth that had never known nor needed the dentist’s care.
They were white and strong and regular, he decided, as he looked at them.
But as he looked, he began to be troubled.
Somewhere, stored away in the recesses of his mind and vaguely remembered, was the impression that there were people who washed their teeth every day.
They were the people from up above-people in her class.
She must wash her teeth every day, too.
What would she think if she learned that he had never washed his teeth in all the days of his life?
He resolved to get a tooth-brush and form the habit.
He would begin at once, to-morrow.
It was not by mere achievement that he could hope to win to her.
He must make a personal reform in all things, even to tooth-washing and neck-gear, though a starched collar affected him as a renunciation of freedom.
He held up his hand, rubbing the ball of the thumb over the calloused palm and gazing at the dirt that was ingrained in the flesh itself and which no brush could scrub away.
How different was her palm!
He thrilled deliciously at the remembrance.
Like a rose-petal, he thought; cool and soft as a snowflake.
He had never thought that a mere woman’s hand could be so sweetly soft. He caught himself imagining the wonder of a caress from such a hand, and flushed guiltily.
It was too gross a thought for her.
In ways it seemed to impugn her high spirituality.
She was a pale, slender spirit, exalted far beyond the flesh; but nevertheless the softness of her palm persisted in his thoughts.
He was used to the harsh callousness of factory girls and working women.
Well he knew why their hands were rough; but this hand of hers… It was soft because she had never used it to work with.
The gulf yawned between her and him at the awesome thought of a person who did not have to work for a living.
He suddenly saw the aristocracy of the people who did not labor.
It towered before him on the wall, a figure in brass, arrogant and powerful.
He had worked himself; his first memories seemed connected with work, and all his family had worked.
There was Gertrude.
When her hands were not hard from the endless housework, they were swollen and red like boiled beef, what of the washing.
And there was his sister Marian.
She had worked in the cannery the preceding summer, and her slim, pretty hands were all scarred with the tomato-knives.
Besides, the tips of two of her fingers had been left in the cutting machine at the paper-box factory the preceding winter.
He remembered the hard palms of his mother as she lay in her coffin.
And his father had worked to the last fading 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.