knee. He was so close to Crispin, and his leg was pushed so firmly against Crispin's leg, that this movement might have been accidental had Crispin's whole hand rested there. But there was only the finger, and soon it began its movement, staying for an instant, pressing through the cloth on to the bone of the knee, then moving very slowly up the thigh, the sharp finger-nail suddenly pushing more firmly into the flesh, then the finger relaxing again and making only a faint tickling creeping suggestion of a pressure. Half-way up the thigh it stopped; for an instant the whole hand, soft, warm and boneless, rested on the stuff of Harkness's trousers, then withdrew, and the fingers, like a cautious animal, moved on.
When Harkness was first conscious of this he tried to move his knee, but he was so tightly wedged in that he could not stir. Then he could not move for another reason, that he was transfixed with apprehension. It was exactly as though a gigantic hand had slipped forward and enclosed him in its grasp, congealing him there, stiffening him into helpless clay—and this was the apprehension of immediate physical pain.
He had known all his days that he was a coward about physical pain, and that was always the form of human experience that he had shrunk from observing, compelling himself sometimes because he so deeply hated his cowardice, to notice, to listen,
