Gypo returned the stare. The two men, unlike in their features and bodies, were exactly alike in the impassivity of their stare. Gypo’s face was like a solid and bulging granite rock, impregnable but lacking that intelligence that is required by strength in order to be able to conquer men. Gallagher’s face was less powerful physically, but it was brimful of intelligence. The forehead was high and it seemed to surround the face. The eyes were large and wide apart. The nose was long and straight. The mouth was thin-lipped. The jaws were firm but slender and refined like a woman’s jaws. The whole face had absolutely no colour, but there was a constant movement in the cheeks, as if tiny streams were coursing irregularly beneath the smooth glossy skin. The hair was coal-black and cut close. The ears were large. The neck opened out gradually from the base of the shoulders on either side, like a hill disappearing into a plain. Then he jumped off his high stool and stood with his legs wide apart in front of Gypo. He was five feet eleven inches and a half in height, but Gypo towered over him with his extra two inches. Gallagher wore a loose brown raincoat, from his throat almost to his ankles, that made his well-built frame look larger and stouter. Yet Gypo, standing bare in his dungarees that were now almost sodden with rain, looked immense compared to him. Gallagher held his hands in his raincoat pockets thrust in front of his body, as if he were pointing pistols at Gypo. Gypo held his hands loosely by his sides, two vast red hands hanging limply from whitish round wrists. Gallagher wore a broad-brimmed black velour hat of a fashionable make. Gypo’s tattered little round hat was still perched on his skull, like a tiny school cap on an overgrown youngster. They looked at one another, the one, handsome, well dressed, confident and indifferent; the other crude, ragged, amazed, anxious. “Well, Gypo,” drawled Gallagher, in the irritating, contemptuous tone that he affected. “Ye don’t seem glad to see me.” “Can’t say that I am,” replied Gypo curtly, almost without moving his lips. “I don’t see no reason to be glad to see ye, Commandant Gallagher. Ye were never a friend o’ mine, an’ I ain’t in the habit o’ crawlin’ on me belly to anybody that don’t like me. I’m not one o’ yer pet lambs any more, so ye needn’t do any bleatin’ as far as I’m concerned. One man is as good as another in this rotten ould world. I’m usin’ yer own words, amn’t I?” Gallagher laughed out loud, a merry laugh that showed his white teeth. He shrugged his shoulders and took a turn around the room. He took a packet of cigarettes from his pocket as he walked and selected one. He kept laughing until he paused to light the cigarette over near the stained-glass window. “Yer a queer fish, Gypo,” he said, again laughing, as he paused to throw the used match into a spittoon.