Joe’s cheeks were emaciated, blackened with a week’s beard. The lips were drawn back wolfishly. Out of hollow sockets the eyes smoldered half-lidded and contemptuous. Joe must have known when the picture was taken that he had a face to scare babies, yet he had turned it straight into the camera in bitterness and contempt. It was the face of a desperado—or of an El Greco martyr before suffering or art or both had refined the passion and defiance out of the eyes and mouth. He tried to read it, to see behind it, but he could not for his life have said whether it was the face of a guilty man
...more
