People did that,--as if he
were a plague. There came into his mind--as he stood counting the
sheaf of notes slide through a grill by a teller who looked at him
once and thereafter kept his eyes averted--a paraphrase of a hoary
quotation, "I am a monster of such frightful mien, as to be hated
needs but to be seen." The rest of it, Hollister thought grimly, could
never apply to him.
He put the money in his pocket and walked out on the street. It was a
busy corner on a humming thoroughfare. Electric cars rumbled and
creaked one behind another on the double tracks. Waves of vehicular
traffic rolled by the curb. A current of humanity flowed past him on
the sidewalk.
Standing there for a minute, Hollister felt again the slow rising of
his resentment against these careless, fortunate ones. He could not
say what caused that feeling. A look, a glance,--the inevitable
shrinking. He was morbidly sensitive. He knew that, knew it was a
state of mind that was growing upon him. But from whatever cause, that
feeling of intolerable isolation gave way to an inner fury.
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