ted behind an oak
desk, turning Hollister's card over in his fingers with an
anticipatory smile. Blankness replaced the smile. A sort of horrified
wonder gleamed in his eyes. Hollister perceived that his face shocked
the specialist in B.C. timber, filled Mr. Lewis with very mixed
sensations indeed.

"You have my card. It is several years since we met. I dare say you
find me unrecognizable," Hollister said bluntly. "Nevertheless I can
identify myself to your satisfaction."

A peculiarity of Hollister's disfigurement was the immobility of his
face. The shell which had mutilated him, the scalpels of the German
field surgeons who had perfunctorily repaired the lacerations, had
left the reddened, scar-distorted flesh in a rigid mold. He could
neither recognizably smile nor frown. His face, such as it was, was
set in unchangeable lines. Out of this rigid, expressionless mask his
eyes glowed, blue and bright, having escaped injury. They were the
only key to the mutations of his mind. If Hollister's eyes were the
windows of his soul, he did not keep the blinds drawn, knowing that
few had the hardihood to peer into those windows now.

Mr. Lewis looked at him, looked away, and then his gaze came slowly
back as if drawn by some fascination against which he struggled in
vain. He did not wish to look at Hollister. Yet he was compelled to
look. He seemed to find difficulty in speech, this suave man of
affairs.

"I'm afraid I shouldn't have recognized you, as you say," he uttered,
at last. "Have you--ah----"

"I've been overseas," Hollister answered the unspoken question. That
strange curiosity, tinctured with repulsion! "The result is obvious."

"Most unfortunate," Mr. Lewis murmured. "But your scars are honorable.
A brother of mine lost an arm at Loos."

"The brothers of a good many people lost more than their arms at
Loos," Hollister returned dryly. "But that is not why I called. You
recollect, I suppose, that when I was out here last I bought a timber
limit in the Toba from your firm. When I went overseas I instructed
you to sell. What was done in that matter?"

Mr. Lewis' countenance cleared at once. He was on his own ground
again, dealing with matters in which he was competent, in consultation
with a client whom he recalled as a person of consequence, the son of
a man who had likewise been of considerable consequence. Personal
undesirability was always discounted in the investment field, the
region of percentum return