But Her hands were soft, and her mother's hands, and her brothers'.

This last came to him as a surprise; it was tremendously indicative of the highness of their caste, of the enormous distance that stretched between her and him.
He sat back on the bed with a bitter laugh, and finished taking off his shoes.

He was a fool; he had been made drunken by a woman's face and by a woman's soft, white hands.

And then, suddenly, before his eyes, on the foul plaster-wall appeared a vision.

He stood in front of a gloomy tenement house.