He was not in the least offended; he told me his experiments had spotted his skin in that way, and nothing would clean off the stains.

I saw Doctor Benjulia's great big hands, while he was giving you the brandy--and I remembered afterwards that there were no stains on them.

I seem to surprise you." "You do indeed surprise me.

After knowing Benjulia for years, I have never noticed, what you have discovered on first seeing him." "Perhaps he has some way of cleaning the stains off his hands." Ovid agreed to this, as the readiest means of dismissing the subject.
Carmina had really startled him.

Some irrational connection between the great chemist's attention to the monkey, and the perplexing purity of his hands, persisted in vaguely asserting itself in Ovid's mind.
His unacknowledged doubts of Benjulia troubled him as they had never troubled him yet.