You Touched Me

he was a young boy who lived in the house with them, but was a stranger.

his secretive mind schemed and worked

e looked at her curiously. She was not beautiful, her nose was too large, her chin was too small, her neck was too thin. But her skin was clear and fine, she had a high-bred sensitiveness. This queer, brave, high-bred quality she shared with her father. The charity boy could see it in her tapering fingers, which were white and ringed. The same glamour that he knew in the elderly man he now saw in the woman. And he wanted to possess himself of it, he wanted to make himself master of it.

Something new was alert in him.

keen memory stinging his mind

self-control, self-indifference,

The fragile exquisiteness of her caress startled him most, revealed unknown things to him.

startled something out of his soul

'He thinks a rare lot of himself!' she whispered.

did not look her best: so thin, so large-nosed, with that pink-and-white checked duster tied round her head. She felt her disadvantage. But she had had a good deal of suffering and sorrow, she did not mind any more.