s eyes
dropped. She sat alone, with none to see, but her face was burning with
shame at sight of the beautiful nakedness of her lover. But she looked
again, guiltily, for the joy that was hers in beholding what she knew
must be sinful to behold. The leap of something within her and the stir
of her being toward him must be sinful. But it was delicious sin, and
she did not deny her eyes. In vain Mrs. Grundy admonished her. The
pagan in her, original sin, and all nature urged her on. The mothers of
all the past were whispering through her, and there was a clamour of the
children unborn. But of this she knew nothing. She knew only that it
was sin, and she lifted her head proudly, recklessly resolved, in one
great surge of revolt, to sin to the uttermost.

She had never dreamed of the form under the clothes. The form, beyond
the hands and the face, had no part in her mental processes. A child of
garmented civilization, the garment was to her the form. The race of men
was to her a race of garmented bipeds, with hands and faces and
hair-covered heads. When she thought of Joe, the Joe instantly
visualized on her mind was a clothed Joe--girl-cheeked, blue-eyed, curly-
headed, but clothed. And there he stood, all but naked, godlike, in a
white blaze of light. She had never conceived of the form of God except
as nebulously naked, and the thought-association was startling. It
seemed to her that her sin partook of sacrilege or blasphemy.

Her chromo-trained aesthetic sense exceeded its education and told her
that here were beauty and wonder. She had always liked the physical
presentment of Joe, but it was a presentment of clothes, and she had
thought the pleasingness of it due to the neatness and taste with which
he dressed. She had never dreamed that this lurked beneath. It dazzled
her. His skin was fair as a woman's, far more satiny, and no rudimentary
hair-growth marred its white lustre. This she perceived, but all the
rest, the perfection of line and strength and development, gave pleasure
without her knowing why. There was a cleanness and grace about it. His
face was like a cameo, and his lips, parted in a smile, made it very
boyish.

He smiled as he faced the audience, when the announcer, placing a hand on
his shoulder, said: "Joe Fleming, the Pride of West Oakland."

Cheers and hand-clappings stormed up, and she heard affectionate cries of
"Oh, you, Joe!" Men shouted it at him again and again.

He