“Do you think you understood Tessie?” Clara was eager. She did not challenge. She wished to be assured.
“I think so.... All except those hands—“
“Hands!”
“That is: that is what I understood the best: they’re the key, so little and so terrible. You see, I know that. Only, I haven’t used the key.”
She smiled in the amazed eyes of Clara.
“Fanny, you sometimes frighten me.” Clara took her hand and held it long and looked at it. Then she squeezed it and smiled also.
“You don’t mean to say: this very first time she told you her story!”
“No. Why did you think so, Clara?”
“What you said about her hands.”
“Who couldn’t see that? They are so small and tortured—plump perverse hands. She had no gloves. Her hands, Clara—her hands have—“