I was a great many years in making myself able to do zat.

See! Put your hand on my leg.

Now my back,--my arm.

What you think, eh ?" Ruth, in some embarrassment, had shyly obeyed her.

The dancer's thigh was like a column of warm iron; her waist, free as ever from stays, was firm and somehow suggestive of actual resilience; her shoulders and back possessed the hard, rippling muscles of a well-developed boy; her shapely forearm was as hard as steel.