I still feel and think. I am as able to love and hate as
you. Was all your talk about honorable scars just prattle to mislead
the men who risked the scars? Is all your much advertised kindliness
and sympathy for war-broken men a bluff?"
He smiled sadly. They would say he was mad. They would classify him as
suffering from shell shock. A frock-coated committee would gravely
recommend him for treatment in the mental hospital at Essondale. They
would not understand.
Hollister covered his face with a swift, tight clasping of his hands.
Something rose chokingly in his throat. Into his eyes a slow, scalding
wetness crept like a film. He set his teeth in one corner of his
pillow.
CHAPTER II
When Hollister was eighteen years old he had been briefly troubled by
an affliction of his eyes brought on from overstudy. His father, at
the time, was interested in certain timber operations on the coast of
British Columbia. In these rude camps, therefore, young Hollister
spent a year. During that twelve months books were prohibited. He
lived in the woods, restored the strength of his eyes amid that
restful greenness, hardened a naturally vigorous body by healthy,
outdoor labor with the logging crews.
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