The Hidden Places by Bertrand W. Sinclair
page 22 of 272 (08%)
page 22 of 272 (08%)
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nothing--absolutely nothing--apart from some form of social grouping.
And society, which had exacted so much from him, seemed peculiarly indifferent to the consequences of those imperative exactions, seemed wholly indifferent to his vital need. And it was not reward or recognition of service performed that Hollister craved. He did not want to be pensioned or subsidized or to have medals pinned on him. What he wanted was chiefly to forget the war and what the war had visited upon him and others like him. Hollister suffered solely from that sense of being held outside the warm circle of human activities, fellowships, friendliness. If he could not overcome that barrier which people threw up around themselves at contact with him, if he could not occasionally know the sound of a friendly voice, he felt that he would very soon go mad. A man cannot go on forever enduring the pressure of the intolerable. Hollister felt that he must soon arrive at a crisis. What form it would take he did not know, and in certain moods he did not care. On the landing at the end of the narrow corridor off which his room opened he met a man in uniform whom he recognized,--a young man who had served under him in the Forty-fourth, who had won a commission on the field. He wore a captain's insignia now. Hollister greeted him by name. "Hello, Tommy." The captain looked at him. His face expressed nothing whatever. Hollister waited for that familiar shadow of distaste to appear. Then he remembered that, like himself, Rutherford must have seen thousands upon thousands of horribly mutilated men. |
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