The perfectly smooth complexion that confronted my inquiring look suggested nothing save the early stages of manhood, though there was perceptible in the eyes a weary nervous expression, that hinted at a youth marred or tempered by experience and disillusion. Many minutes must have been occupied in contemplation of this beautiful and yet spurious specimen of juvenile physiognomy before I began to note a very slight alteration in the skin and outlines of the face before me; tiny delicate pencillings like the ghosts of hoar-frost tracery were forming below the lids and at the corners of the temples; the rotundity of the cheeks seemed to shrink; queer vindictive lines started here and there on the countenance, spoiling its fixed impression of repose and announcing anxiety and discontent. I grew overwhelmingly interested in this whimsical exhibition of scientific magic (if I may so describe it); of alarm or disgust I felt no scintilla as yet, so absorbed was I in my attitude of inquisitive observation. Having once declared itself visibly, this metamorphosis of the face seemed to develop more rapidly; the skin was bereft of its freshness and became sallow and somewhat transparent; I could tell the staring bones within, and the contours of the skull were clearly defined. The hair had lost its sheen, and the throat its firmness and fulness. But it no more horrified me to detect my own skeleton peeping forth through the imprisoning flesh than it would have startled me to see my naked body on stripping to bathe. Whatever might be my final decision, whether to remain on Earth and perish, or to proceed to Meleager and live, Fajal's device could exercise no sort of influence over my well-ordered mind. It was uncanny, unwholesome, unnatural; but as a practical argument for its acknowledged purpose it must prove utterly unavailing, and was in truth almost childish in its conception.