peculiarities of what I felt to be a very
striking personality, but it was borne in upon me that he was a man
apart from his fellows, a mind that followed a line leading away from
ordinary human intercourse and human interests, and into regions that
left in his atmosphere something remote, rarefied, chilling.

"The moment he was gone I became conscious of two things--an intense
curiosity to know more about this man and what his real interests were,
and secondly, the fact that my skin was crawling and that my hair had a
tendency to rise."

The doctor paused a moment here to puff hard at his pipe, which,
however, had gone out beyond recall without the assistance of a match;
and in the deep silence, which testified to the genuine interest of his
listeners, someone poked the fire up into a little blaze, and one or two
others glanced over their shoulders into the dark distances of the big
hall.

"On looking back," he went on, watching the momentary flames in the
grate, "I see a short, thick-set man of perhaps forty-five, with immense
shoulders and small, slender hands. The contrast was noticeable, for I
remember thinking that such a giant frame and such slim finger bones
hardly belonged together. His head, too, was large and very long, the
head of an idealist beyond all question, yet with an unusually strong
development of the jaw and chin. Here again was a singular
contradiction, though I am better able now to appreciate its full
meaning, with a greater experience in judging the values of
physiognomy. For this meant, of course, an enthusiastic idealism
balanced and kept in check by will and judgment--elements usually
deficient in dreamers and visionaries.

"At any rate, here was a being with probably a very wide range of
possibilities, a machine with a pendulum that most likely had an unusual
length of swing.

"The man's hair was exceedingly fine, and the lines about his nose and
mouth were cut as with a delicate steel instrument in wax. His eyes I
have left to the last. They were large and quite changeable, not in
colour only, but in character, size, and shape. Occasionally they seemed
the eyes of someone else, if you can understand what I mean, and at the
same time, in their shifting shades of blue, green, and a nameless sort
of dark grey, there was a sinister light in them that lent to the whole
face an aspect almost alarming. Moreover, they were the most luminous
optics I think I have ever seen in any human being