When a man is thirsty he must drink.
When he is hungry food alone can satisfy that hunger. And there arose
in Hollister that ancient sex-hunger from which no man may escape.
It had been dormant in him for a time; dormant but not dead. In all
his life Hollister had never gone about consciously looking upon women
with a lustful eye. But he understood life, its curious
manifestations, its sensory demands, its needs. For a long time pain,
grief, suffering of body and anguish of mind had suppressed in him
every fluttering of desire. He had accepted that apparent snuffing out
of passion thankfully. Where, he had said to himself when he thought
of this, where would he find such a woman as he could love who would
find pleasure in the embrace of a marred thing like himself? Ah, no.
He had seen them shrink too often from mere sight of his twisted face.
The fruits of love were not for the plucking of such as he. Therefore
he was glad that the urge of sex no longer troubled him.
Yet here in a brief span, amid these silent hills and dusky forests
where he had begun to perceive that life might still have
compensations for him, this passivity had been overthrown, swept away,
destroyed.
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