He sat now staring out the window. A storm had broken over Vancouver
that day. To-night it was still gathering force. The sky was a
lowering, slate-colored mass of clouds, spitting squally bursts of
rain that drove in wet lines against his window and made the street
below a glistening area shot with tiny streams and shallow puddles
that were splashed over the curb by rolling motor wheels. The wind
droned its ancient, melancholy chant among the telephone wires, shook
with its unseen, powerful hands a row of bare maples across the way,
rattled the windows in their frames. Now and then, in a momentary lull
of the wind, a brief cessation of the city noises, Hollister could
hear far off the beat of the Gulf seas bursting on the beach at
English Bay, snoring in the mouth of False Creek. A dreary,
threatening night that fitted his mood.
He sat pondering over the many-horned dilemma upon which he hung
impaled. He had done all that a man could do. He had given the best
that was in him, played the game faithfully, according to the rules.
And the net result had been for him the most complete disaster.
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