"You carry me completely," I replied, "But--forgive me asking--how is what you propose accomplishing to be done? Thus far you have dealt only in generalisations, but generalisations by themselves never yet brought about a revolution." "You are absolutely right," he replied quickly. "In the ordinary way I should say it could not be done for another twenty, thirty, perhaps another hundred years. There is only one way; but there _is_ a way. There is only one man who can do it; but there is such a man, as you yourself will admit when you hear his name." He stopped, and for at least half a minute looked at me searchingly, as if uncertain how far he was justified in taking me into his confidence, but muttering to himself meanwhile, in language which, by the word or two I caught, I knew to be French. So close was his face to mine that I saw what at first I thought was my own face mirrored in his eyes. But, as I looked, the picture-face in his eyes became more definite, and I knew that the face I saw there was not mine. It was a face there was no mistaking; a face which every schoolboy, every child, would have recognised at sight. And now it seemed to be growing larger until what had been a tiny picture, in the pupils of the Dumpling's eyes, was the life-size head of a man, looking at me with eyes of its own--eyes so stern, so cold, so cruel, so commanding, that the bidding of the set lips beneath them few men would dare to disobey. At the bidding of those lips, at one glance from those eyes--men, regiments, an army, even, had gone forth unhesitatingly to die. That all this could be seen in the picture, which is formed in the pupils of one man's eyes, sounds incredible, and I can only explain it by saying that what I saw lay not in the pupils themselves, but lay behind those pupils, through which I looked as one looks through a window. Then suddenly the face which I had seen faded away. Silhouetted against the sky, I saw the solitary figure of a man standing upon the rocky point of an island, and looking out--the soul of him more lonely than that lone island, so far away from other land, and surrounded by a wasteful wilderness of waters--the heart of him torn with unrest, wilder, sadder, more hopeless, than the surging, sobbing unrest of those surrounding seas. Then, too, this picture faded, and I was looking upon the face of the Dumpling, and listening to the words which fell sharply, incisively, from his lips. Clearly he had decided to trust me with his great secret, and something of the excitement which I saw upon his face communicated itself to me as I listened.