Nadia saw again and again how beautiful humans were. Nakedness was dangerous to the social order, she thought, because it revealed too much reality. They stood before each other with all their imperfections and their sexual characteristics and their intimations of mortality—but most of all with their astonishing beauty, which in the ruddy light of the tunnel sunset could scarcely be believed, could scarcely be comprehended or answered. Skin at sunset had a lot of red in it—but not enough for some of the Reds, apparently, who were sponging one of their women down with a red dye they had
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