face
has made me, somehow, doubt whether there are any faces. I don't know
whether your face, Bull, is a face or a combination in perspective.
Perhaps one black disc of your beastly glasses is quite close and
another fifty miles away. Oh, the doubts of a materialist are not worth
a dump. Sunday has taught me the last and the worst doubts, the doubts
of a spiritualist. I am a Buddhist, I suppose; and Buddhism is not
a creed, it is a doubt. My poor dear Bull, I do not believe that you
really have a face. I have not faith enough to believe in matter."

Syme's eyes were still fixed upon the errant orb, which, reddened in the
evening light, looked like some rosier and more innocent world.

"Have you noticed an odd thing," he said, "about all your descriptions?
Each man of you finds Sunday quite different, yet each man of you can
only find one thing to compare him to--the universe itself. Bull
finds him like the earth in spring, Gogol like the sun at noonday. The
Secretary is reminded of the shapeless protoplasm, and the Inspector
of the carelessness of virgin forests. The Professor says he is like a
changing landscape. This is queer, but it is queerer still that I also
have had my odd notion about the President, and I also find that I think
of Sunday as I think of the whole world."

"Get on a little faster, Syme," said Bull; "never mind the balloon."

"When I first saw Sunday," said Syme slowly, "I only saw his back; and
when I saw his back, I knew he was the worst man in the world. His neck
and shoulders were brutal, like those of some apish god. His head had a
stoop that was hardly human, like the stoop of an ox. In fact, I had
at once the revolting fancy that this was not a man at all, but a beast
dressed up in men's clothes."

"Get on," said Dr. Bull.

"And then the queer thing happened. I had seen his back from the street,
as he sat in the balcony. Then I entered the hotel, and coming round the
other side of him, saw his face in the sunlight. His face frightened me,
as it did everyone; but not because it was brutal, not because it was
evil. On the contrary, it frightened me because it was so beautiful,
because it was so good."

"Syme," exclaimed the Secretary, "are you ill?"

"It was like the face of some ancient archangel, judging justly after
heroic wars. There was laughter in the eyes, and in the mouth honour
and sorrow. There was the same white hair, the same great, grey-clad
shoulders that I had seen from