"And now I was in a quandary. I sat down on a bowlder to take a breath. Supposing I knocked at the door and asked if any one had seen the Third Mate, and the inhabitants had not seen him and couldn't understand me, I should have done no good. And supposing they had seen him, or that he was inside, I should have some difficulty in explaining my interest in his private affairs. For I liked him, and we are always afraid of those whom we like. It is not only that we fear to tarnish our own reputation in their eyes, but we suffer a mingled terror and pleasure lest we discover them to be unworthy of their exalted position in our affections. So I got up and instead of knocking at the door I stepped among the shrubs and came to the window. And sitting close against the wall, with a small table in front of him and his head on his hand, sat Captain Macedoine. "He was old. He showed, as we say, the ravages of time. And not of time only. Time alone could not furrow a human face into so many distorting folds and wrinkles. As I recalled the sleek, full-fed condition of his big smooth-shaven face when I had known him in the old days, I was revolted at the change. It was as though an evil spirit had been striving for years to leave him, and had failed. The cheeks were sunk into furrows of gray stubble and had sagged into sardonic ridges round the thin, wavering line of the mouth. The red eyelids blinked and twitched among the innumerable seams that ran back to the sparse, iron-gray hair. The nose, quite a noble and aquiline affair once, was red at the end, and querulous, like the long lean chin and reedy neck. Only the brow gave any hint that he might not be a casual loafer at a railroad station willing to carry your grip for a few pennies. High, narrow, and revealed remorselessly by the passing of the years, it was the brow of the supreme illusionist, the victim of an implacable and sinister spiritual destiny. I have said that when I saw him the previous evening he had the look of a man trying to win back into the world. Now that I saw him more clearly, he looked as though he had come back, at some frightful cost, and regretted it.