Chapter 61

On that first occasion the Venerable was conscious of feeling the distinct shock of Gilbert Merris’s strangeness. The closed eyelids were the eyelids of a man asleep, and yet the face had a peculiar and attentive wakefulness. It was a handsome head and a weak head, the upper lip and chin covered with a dark dapple of soft hair like the virgin hair on the face of a Greek youth in marble. The closed eyelids produced an effect that was curious and slightly sinister. Sometimes a supercilious smirk seemed to hover over …