It was the face of the man on the Waterloo steps! And out of his abominable misery Wolf cried a wordless cry to this face; and the nature of this cry was such that it seemed to break⁠—so desperate it was⁠—some psychic tension in his brain. And it seemed to him that what he was appealing to now was something beyond his mother, beyond his father, beyond Christie herself⁠—something that was the upgathered, incarnated look , turned toward life’s engines, of every sentient thing, since the beginning of time, that those engines had crushed.

The smell of the pigsty across the way must have been the reason why the look he appealed to was only partially human. It was an animal look⁠ ⁠… it was a bird look⁠ ⁠… it was the look of the fish’s eye that he had seen on a counter as he came along the street that very night; it was the look of a wounded snake’s eye that he had had time to mark long ago, out on some country road near London, before he ended its suffering.