half-exposure

Updated: June 13, 2025

Whether it was the excitement of his perilous situation, or whether the perfect symmetry of his bared bust and arms unlike anything she had ever seen before clothed him with the cold ideality of a statue, she could not say, but she felt no shock of modesty; while the man, accustomed to the public half-exposure in tights and spangles, was more conscious of detected unreadiness than of shame.

Bret Harte - Tales of Trail and Town