ped with it.
However we shall do our best. Have you a price in mind, Mr.
Hollister, for a quick sale?"

"I paid ten thousand for it. On the strength of your advice as a
specialist in timber investments," he added with a touch of malice. He
had taken a dislike to Mr. Lewis. He had not been so critical of
either men or motives in the old days. He had remembered Lewis as a
good sort. Now he disliked the man, distrusted him. He was too smooth,
too sleek. "I'll discount that twenty percent, for a cash sale."

Mr. Lewis made a memorandum.

"Very good," said he, raising his head with an inquiring air, as if to
say "If that is all----"

"If you will kindly identify me at a bank,"--Hollister rose from his
chair, "I shall cease to trouble you. I have a draft on the Bank of
B.N.A. I do not know any one in Vancouver."

"No trouble, I assure you," Lewis hastened to assent, but his tone
lacked heartiness, sincerity.

It was only a little distance to the bank, but Lewis insisted on
making the journey in a motorcar which stood at the curb. It was plain
to Hollister that Mr. Lewis disliked the necessity of appearing in
public with him, that he took this means of avoiding the crowded
sidewalks, of meeting people. He introduced Hollister, excused himself
on the plea of business pressure, and left Hollister standing before
the teller's wicket.

This was not a new attitude to Hollister. People did that,--as if he
were a plague. There came into his mind--as he stood counting the
sheaf of notes slide through a grill by a teller who looked at him
once and thereafter kept his eyes averted--a paraphrase of a hoary
quotation, "I am a monster of such frightful mien, as to be hated
needs but to be seen." The rest of it, Hollister thought grimly, could
never apply to him.

He put the money in his pocket and walked out on the street. It was a
busy corner on a humming thoroughfare. Electric cars rumbled and
creaked one behind another on the double tracks. Waves of vehicular
traffic rolled by the curb. A current of humanity flowed past him on
the sidewalk.

Standing there for a minute, Hollister felt again the slow rising of
his resentment against these careless, fortunate ones. He could not
say what caused that feeling. A look, a glance,--the inevitable
shrinking. He was morbidly sensitive. He knew that, knew it was a
state of mind that was growing upon him. But from whatever cause, that
feeling of intolerable isolation gave way to an inn