Hollister was not thinking particularly of these things. He had eaten
his meal at a table with half a dozen other men. In the saloon
probably two score others applied themselves, with more diligence than
refinement, to their food. There was a leavening of women in this male
mass of loggers, fishermen, and what-not. A buzz of conversation
filled the place. But Hollister was not a participant. He observed
casual, covert glances at his disfigured face, that disarrangement of
his features and marring of his flesh which made men ill at ease in
his presence. He felt a recurrence of the old protest against this. He
experienced a return of that depression which had driven him out of
Vancouver. It was a disheartenment from which nothing in the future,
no hope, no dream, could deliver him. He was as he was. He would
always be like that. The finality of it appalled him.
After a time he became aware of a young woman leaning, like himself,
against the rail a few feet distant. He experienced a curious degree
of self-consciousness as he observed her.
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