m. It was an unconscious movement. It brought back to him that
haunting memory of hill and stream when some soft-eyed fawn, strayed
from her fellows, would let him approach quite close to her, and then,
when he put out his hand to caress her, would start away with a swift,
quivering movement.

"Do you always wear gloves?" he asked her one evening a little later.

"Yes," she answered, speaking low; "when I'm out of doors."

"But this is not out of doors," he had pleaded. "We have come into the
garden. Won't you take them off?"

She had looked at him from under bent brows, as if trying to read him.
She did not answer him then. But on the way out, on the last seat
close to the gate, she had sat down, motioning him to sit beside her.
Quietly she unbuttoned the fawn gloves; drew each one off and laid them
aside. And then, for the first time, he saw her hands.

Had he looked at her, seen the faint hope die out, the mute agony in
the quiet eyes watching him, he would have tried to hide the disgust,
the physical repulsion that showed itself so plainly in his face, in
the involuntary movement with which he drew away from her. They were
small and shapely with rounded curves, but raw and seared as with hot
irons, with a growth of red, angry-coloured warts, and the nails all
worn away.

"I ought to have shown them to you before," she said simply as she drew
the gloves on again. "It was silly of me. I ought to have known."

He tried to comfort her, but his phrases came meaningless and halting.

It was the work, she explained as they walked on. It made your hands
like that after a time. If only she could have got out of it earlier!
But now! It was no good worrying about it now.

They parted near to the Hanover Gate, but to-night he did not stand
watching her as he had always done till she waved a last good-bye to
him just before disappearing; so whether she turned or not he never
knew.

He did not go to meet her the next evening. A dozen times his
footsteps led him unconsciously almost to the gate. Then he would
hurry away again, pace the mean streets, jostling stupidly against the
passers-by. The pale, sweet face, the little nymph-like figure, the
little brown shoes kept calling to him. If only there would pass away
the horror of those hands! All the artist in him shuddered at the
memory of them. Always he had imagined them under the neat, smooth
gloves as fitting in with all the rest of her, dreaming of