sh to be misunderstood. What I mean is that it was the face
of a man who either did nothing contrary to the dictates of his
conscience, or who had no conscience. I am inclined to the latter way of
accounting for it. He was a magnificent atavism, a man so purely
primitive that he was of the type that came into the world before the
development of the moral nature. He was not immoral, but merely unmoral.

As I have said, in the masculine sense his was a beautiful face.
Smooth-shaven, every line was distinct, and it was cut as clear and sharp
as a cameo; while sea and sun had tanned the naturally fair skin to a
dark bronze which bespoke struggle and battle and added both to his
savagery and his beauty. The lips were full, yet possessed of the
firmness, almost harshness, which is characteristic of thin lips. The
set of his mouth, his chin, his jaw, was likewise firm or harsh, with all
the fierceness and indomitableness of the male--the nose also. It was
the nose of a being born to conquer and command. It just hinted of the
eagle beak. It might have been Grecian, it might have been Roman, only
it was a shade too massive for the one, a shade too delicate for the
other. And while the whole face was the incarnation of fierceness and
strength, the primal melancholy from which he suffered seemed to greaten
the lines of mouth and eye and brow, seemed to give a largeness and
completeness which otherwise the face would have lacked.

And so I caught myself standing idly and studying him. I cannot say how
greatly the man had come to interest me. Who was he? What was he? How
had he happened to be? All powers seemed his, all potentialities--why,
then, was he no more than the obscure master of a seal-hunting schooner
with a reputation for frightful brutality amongst the men who hunted
seals?

My curiosity burst from me in a flood of speech.

"Why is it that you have not done great things in this world? With the
power that is yours you might have risen to any height. Unpossessed of
conscience or moral instinct, you might have mastered the world, broken
it to your hand. And yet here you are, at the top of your life, where
diminishing and dying begin, living an obscure and sordid existence,
hunting sea animals for the satisfaction of woman's vanity and love of
decoration, revelling in a piggishness, to use your own words, which is
anything and everything except splendid. Why, with all that wonderful
strength, have you n