that it seemed to pervade the advocate with the stealth of a drug. But the emotion of disgust with which he had withdrawn his hand when first he grew conscious that he touched her was no longer present when he offered it again. The second time she clasped her fingers round it so that their pressure seemed to sear his skin. It had the heat of a live coal.
In releasing his hand she let her fingers yield it so imperceptibly that he did not know the precise point at which it had ceased to be held; and he was afraid to make a motion of withdrawal, lest it should be interpreted as a repetition of that which had dealt her a wound. He tried to see her face, but in the darkness there was no lineament to decipher.
"This is my deliverer," he heard her breathe.
"How have you come to know it?" The advocate was devoured by an intolerable curiosity.
"Your hands—your hands, they are so powerful; are you not so strong?"
There was nothing in these words that the advocate had expected; the voice, the manner of their utterance, their apparent irrelevance, made a strange effect in his ears.
"They will not do me to death," she said, in a tone he could hardly hear. "I never tasted life until I was brought into prison. And you cannot think how sweet it is to me. Everything has become so beautiful: the birds, the trees, and the sky, and the crowds of people and the mud of the great city."
She clutched the hand of the young advocate with a convulsive shudder.
