So he should for the murder; but for the self-confession, which is Stevenson's ultimate design, no time or place could have been better.

It is a self-confession that, pleasant as the study of his countenance is, to resolve that study into knowledge is beyond her powers; and

His impulses towards self-confession, towards brotherhood, towards vice, towards cynicism, towards his belief in God and his scorn of Him, come out of this world; and beyond it he sees his fellow-men as trees walking, and the Mountain of God as a distant peak, placed there only to emphasise his irony.