train journey, charming man*
I have been sitting opposite a young man in the train all day - a vagabond about nineteen, with a well-knit frame and sweet face, exhibiting no special beauty but radiating intelligence and the magnetic force of the male adolescent. I look at his hands - great powerful palms and fingers, fashioned to mould and clasp, yet finely shaped, and attached to sinewy wrists, where the skin had smoother texture, showing veins and the salience of sinews. Enough of his throat and forearms was visible to make one divine how white and wholesome was the flesh of the young man's body. I felt I could have kissed those hands hardened with labour, bruised here and there, brown in in complexion - have kissed them and have begged of them to touch me. Then it flashed across my mind that no woman's hands- whether of duchess or milkmaid, maiden or married - had ever possessed for me such attraction as these of the young vagabond's.