large features and strong lines, of the square order, yet well
filled out, was apparently massive at first sight; but again, as
with the body, the massiveness seemed to vanish, and a conviction
to grow of a tremendous and excessive mental or spiritual strength
that lay behind, sleeping in the deeps of his being. The jaw, the
chin, the brow rising to a goodly height and swelling heavily above
the eyes,--these, while strong in themselves, unusually strong,
seemed to speak an immense vigour or virility of spirit that lay
behind and beyond and out of sight. There was no sounding such a
spirit, no measuring, no determining of metes and bounds, nor
neatly classifying in some pigeon-hole with others of similar type.

The eyes--and it was my destiny to know them well--were large and
handsome, wide apart as the true artist's are wide, sheltering
under a heavy brow and arched over by thick black eyebrows. The
eyes themselves were of that baffling protean grey which is never
twice the same; which runs through many shades and colourings like
intershot silk in sunshine; which is grey, dark and light, and
greenish-grey, and sometimes of the clear azure of the deep sea.
They were eyes that masked the soul with a thousand guises, and
that sometimes opened, at rare moments, and allowed it to rush up
as though it were about to fare forth nakedly into the world on
some wonderful adventure,--eyes that could brood with the hopeless
sombreness of leaden skies; that could snap and crackle points of
fire like those which sparkle from a whirling sword; that could
grow chill as an arctic landscape, and yet again, that could warm
and soften and be all a-dance with love-lights, intense and
masculine, luring and compelling, which at the same time fascinate
and dominate women till they surrender in a gladness of joy and of
relief and sacrifice.