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For thirty years he had had the power to hurt. Why should he deny himself? He could regret nothing, being what he was. He stood six feet two in his stockinged feet, and at sixty had the strength of a young ox. But it was not his size that made men and women turn in the street to look after him. His ugliness was fascinating, his immense red face was seamed and lined into a hundred ridges and hollows. His nose was big, squat, bulbous. His mouth broad and thick-lipped; one corner lifted so that he seemed to be sneering all the time.

He was neither proud nor ashamed of his ugliness. He had accepted his appearance as he had accepted his desires, as normal in himself.

Such was Abel Bellamy, late of Chicago, now of Garre Castle in Berkshire, a man born without the gift of loving.

Standing by the long window of the hotel, he watched the work progressing. Who was the builder, what was the building, he neither knew nor cared. The men who moved cautiously along narrow and perilous paths were his own men for the moment. He growled under his breath as his quick eye located a party of three rivetters, who, free from the observation of their foreman, were idling.