e, a head domed and massive, white and
smooth--it was a head that had always interested me. But as I looked, my
mind already searching for the reason of this hallucination, I saw that
the lower part of the face was that of an infant. My eyes wandered from
the book, and my gaze fluttered along the four persons seated opposite
to me, till it rested on the reality of my vision. And even as my
attention was thus irresistibly dragged from my book, my mind clung with
a feeble desperation to its task, and I murmured under my breath like a
child repeating a mechanically learned lesson: "Knowledge is not the
divergence of the ray but the ray itself...."

For several seconds the eyes of the infant held mine. Its gaze was
steady and clear as that of a normal child, but what differentiated it
was the impression one received of calm intelligence. The head was
completely bald, and there was no trace of eyebrows, but the eyes
themselves were protected by thick, short lashes.

The child turned its head, and I felt my muscles relax. Until then I had
not been conscious that they had been stiffened. My gaze was released,
pushed aside as it were, and I found myself watching the object of the
child's next scrutiny.

This object was a man of forty or so, inclined to corpulence, and
untidy. He bore the evidences of failure in the process of becoming. He
wore a beard that was scanty and ragged, there were bald patches of skin
on the jaw; one inferred that he wore that beard only to save the
trouble of shaving. He was sitting next to me, the middle passenger of
the three on my side of the carriage, and he was absorbed in the pages
of a half-penny paper--I think he was reading the police reports--which
was interposed between him and the child in the corner diagonally
opposite to that which I occupied.

The man was hunched up, slouching, his legs crossed, his elbows seeking
support against his body; he held his clumsily folded paper close to his
eyes. He had the appearance of being very myopic, but he did not wear
glasses.

As I watched him, he began to fidget. He uncrossed his legs and hunched
his body deeper into the back of his seat. Presently his eyes began to
creep up the paper in front of him. When they reached the top, he
hesitated a moment, making a survey under cover, then he dropped his
hands and stared stupidly at the infant in the corner, his mouth
slightly open, his feet pulled in under the seat of the carriage.

As the child