The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Falk by Joseph Conrad: aware he never touched meat. Throughout he
spoke English, of course of my account.
He swayed forward heavily.
The girl, with her hands raised before her pale
eyes, was threading her needle. He glanced at her,
and his mighty trunk overshadowed the table,
bringing nearer to us the breadth of his shoulders,
the thickness of his neck, and that incongruous, an-
chorite head, burnt in the desert, hollowed and lean
as if by excesses of vigils and fasting. His beard
flowed imposingly downwards, out of sight, be-
Falk |