and the veins were strong in it

The arm was bent. Out of the dark suit, the starched cuff, sprang the hairy wrist. The wrist was angled; the hand was arched; none of the fingers touched each other. The hand was so composed that it seemed at once casual and majestic. It stood exactly above the center of his body. The fingers looked unusually clean and dry, as if they had been scrubbed with great care. The hand looked very strong, and the veins were strong in it. The nostrils were very dark, yet he thought he could see in one of them, something which looked like cotton. On the lower lip, a trifle to the left of its middle, there was a small blue line which ran also a little below the lip. At the exact point of the chin, there was another small blue mark, as straight and neat as might be drawn with a pencil, and scarcely wider. The lines which formed the wings of the nose and the mouth were almost gone. The hair was most carefully brushed. The eyes were casually and quietly closed, the eyelids were like silk on the balls, and when Rufus glanced quickly from the eyes to the mouth it seemed as if his father were almost about to smile. Yet the mouth carried no suggestion either of smiling or of gravity; only strength, silence, manhood, and indifferent contentment. He saw him much more clearly than he had ever seen him before; yet his face looked unreal, as if he had just been shaved by a barber. The whole head was waxen, and the hand, too, was as if perfectly made of wax. The head was lifted on a small white satin pillow. There was the subtle, curious odor, like fresh hay, and like a hospital, but not quite like either, and so faint that it was scarcely possible to be sure that it existed.