him, a sickening conviction that although living, he was dead,--dead
in so far as the common, casual intimacies of daily intercourse with
his fellows went. It was as if men and women were universally
repulsed by that grotesquely distorted mask which served him for a
face, as if at sight of it by common impulse they made off, withdrew
to a safe distance, as they would withdraw from any loathsome thing.

Lying on his bed, Hollister flexed his arms. He arched his chest and
fingered the muscular breadth of it in the darkness. Bodily, he was a
perfect man. Strength flowed through him in continuous waves. He could
feel within himself the surge of vast stores of energy. His brain
functioned with a bright, bitter clearness. He could feel,--ah, that
was the hell of it. That quivering response to the subtle nuances of
thought! A profound change had come upon him, yet essentially he, the
man, was unchanged. Except for those scars, the convoluted ridges of
tissue, the livid patches and the ghastly hollows where once his
cheeks and lips and forehead had been smooth and regular, he was as he
had always been.

For a moment there came over him the wild impulse to rush out into the
street, crying:

"You fools! Because my face is torn and twisted makes me no different
from you. I still feel and think. I am as able to love and hate as
you. Was all your talk about honorable scars just prattle to mislead
the men who risked the scars? Is all your much advertised kindliness
and sympathy for war-broken men a bluff?"

He smiled sadly. They would say he was mad. They would classify him as
suffering from shell shock. A frock-coated committee would gravely