detached and not at all buoyant air.

His air was detached because he had other things in his mind than those
merely passing before him, and he was not buoyant because they were not
cheerful or encouraging subjects for reflection. He was a big young man,
well hung together, and carrying himself well; his face was square-jawed
and rugged, and he had dark red hair restrained by its close cut from
waving strongly on his forehead. His eyes were red brown, and a few dark
freckles marked his clear skin. He was of the order of man one looks at
twice, having looked at him once, though one does not in the least know
why, unless one finally reaches some degree of intimacy.

He watched the vehicles, heavy and light, roll into the big shed-like
building and deposit their freight; he heard the voices and caught the
sentences of instruction and comment; he saw boxes and bales hauled from
the dock side to the deck and swung below with the rattling of machinery
and chains. But these formed merely a noisy background to his mood,
which was self-centred and gloomy. He was one of those who go back to
their native land knowing themselves conquered. He had left England two
years before, feeling obstinately determined to accomplish a certain
difficult thing, but forces of nature combining with the circumstances
of previous education and living had beaten him. He had lost two years
and all the money he had ventured. He was going back to the place he
had come from, and he was carrying with him a sense of having been used
hardly by fortune, and in a way he had not deserved.

He had gone out to the West with the intention of working hard and using
his hands as well as his brains; he had not been squeamish; he had, in
fact, laboured like a ploughman; and to be obliged to give in had been
galling and bitter. There are human beings into whose consciousness of