He
was like poverty and injustice,--present but ignored. And this being
shunned and avoided, as if he were something which should go about in
furtive obscurity, was rapidly driving Hollister to a state
approaching desperation.
For he could not rid himself of the social impulse any more than a
healthy man can rid himself of the necessity for food and drink at
certain intervals. If Hollister had been so crushed in body and mind
that his spirit was utterly quenched, if his vitality had been so
drained that he could sit passive and let the world go by unheeded,
then he would have been at peace.
He had seen men like that--many of them--content to sit in the sun,
to be fed and let alone. Their hearts were broken as well as their
bodies.
But except for the distortion of his face, he returned as he had gone
away, a man in full possession of his faculties, his passions, his
strength. He could not be passive either physically or mentally. His
mind was too alert, his spirit too sensitive, his body too crammed
with vitality to see life go swinging by and have no hand in its
manifestations and adventures.
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