A feeling not far short of terror had folded itself about him like a
shrouding fog.
It had not seized him unaware. For weeks he had seen it looming over
him, and he had schooled himself to disregard a great deal which his
perception was too acute to misunderstand. He had struggled
desperately against the unescapable, recognizing certain significant
facts and in the same breath denying their accumulated force in sheer
self-defense.
A small dressing-table topped by an oval mirror stood against the wall
beside his bed. Hollister took his unseeing gaze off the door with a
start, like a man withdrawing his mind from wandering in far places.
He sat down before the dressing-table and forced himself to look
steadfastly, appraisingly, at the reflection of his face in the
mirror--that which had once been a presentable man's countenance.
He shuddered and dropped his eyes. This was a trial he seldom ventured
upon. He could not bear that vision long. No one could. That was the
fearful implication which made him shrink. He, Robert Hollister, in
the flush of manhood, with a body whose symmetry and vigor other men
had envied, a mind that functioned alertly, a spirit as nearly
indomitable as the spirit of man may be, was like a leper among his
own kind; he had become a something that filled other men with pitying
dismay when they looked at him, that made women avert their gaze and
withdraw from him in spite of pity.
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