Crossley describes himself as "of middle age, and tall; his hair grey; his face never still for a moment; his eyes large and bright, sometimes yellow, sometimes brown, sometimes grey." He is an uncertain image, dreamlike. As the storyteller, he is a powerful force: "'My story is true,' he said, 'every word of it. Or, when I say that my story is "true," I mean at least that I am telling it in a new way. It is always the same story, but I sometimes vary the climax and even recast the characters. Variation keeps it fresh and therefore true.'" Crossley here represents himself as a storyteller, having all of a storyteller's destructive and creative powers. He can kill everything in his tale with a shout, and he shapes and reshapes the marriage of Rachel and Richard at will.

If Crossley is symbolic of the storyteller...