But Wilbraham could notice nothing but His Eyes; they were the most beautiful, tender, gentle Eyes that he had ever seen in any human being.
They sat down. Wilbraham's overwhelming fear was lest his Guest should leave him. They began to talk and Wilbraham took it at once as accepted that his Friend knew all about him—everything.
He found himself eagerly plunging into details of scenes, episodes that he had long put behind him—put behind him for shame perhaps or for regret or for sorrow. He knew at once that there was nothing that he need veil nor hide—nothing. He had no sense that he must consider susceptibilities nor avoid self-confession that was humiliating.
But he did find, as he talked on, a sense of shame from another side creep towards him and begin to enclose him. Shame at the smallness, meanness, emptiness of the things that he declared.
He had had always behind his mistakes and sins a sense that he was a rather unusually interesting person; if only his friends knew everything about him they would be surprised at the remarkable man that he really was. Now it was exactly the opposite sense that came over him. In the gold-rimmed mirror that was over his mantlepiece he saw himself diminishing, diminishing, diminishing ... First himself, large, red-faced, smiling, rotund, lying back in his chair; then the face shrivelling, the limbs shortening, then the face small and peaked, the hands and legs little and mean, then the chair enormous about and around the little trembling animal cowering against the cushion.
He sprang up.
"No, no ... I can't tell you any more—and you've known it all so long. I am mean, small, nothing—I have not even great ambition ... nothing."
His Guest stood up and put His Hand on his shoulder.
They talked, standing side by side, and He said some things that belonged to Wilbraham alone, that he would not tell me.
Wilbraham asked Him why He had come—and to him.