In the bedroom occupied by their housekeeper stood the only mirror in the house. Hollister went in there and stood before it, staring at the presentment of himself in the glass. He turned away with a shiver. He would not blame her if with clear vision she recoiled from that. He could expect nothing else. Or would she endure that frightful mien until she could first pity, then embrace? Hollister threw out his hands in a swift gesture of uncertainty. He could only wait and see, and meanwhile twist and turn upon the grid. He could not be calm and detached and impersonal. For him there was too much at stake.
He left all the doors and windows wide and climbed the hill. If he were to withstand the onslaught of these uncertainties, these forebodings which pressed upon him with such damnable weight, he must bestir himself. He must not sit down and brood. He knew that. It was not with any particular enthusiasm that he came upon his crew at work, that his eye marked the widening stump-dotted area where a year before the cedars stood branch to branch, nor when he looked over the long ricks of bolts waiting that swift plunge down the chute.
Bill Hayes gave a terse account of his stewardship during Hollister's absence. So many cords of bolts cut and boomed and delivered to the mill. Hollister's profits were accelerating, the fruit of an insatiable market, of inflated prices. As he trudged down the hill, he reflected upon that. He was glad in a way. If Doris could not or would not live with him, he could make life easy for her and the boy. Money would do that for them. With a strange perverseness, his mind dwelt upon the most complete breaking up of his domestic life. It persisted in shadowing forth scenes in which he and Doris took part, in which it was made plain how and why they could no longer live together. In Hollister's mind these scenes always ended by his crying despairingly "If you can't, why, you can't, I suppose. I don't blame you." And he would give her the bigger half of his funds and go his way. He would not blame her for feeling like that. Nevertheless, Hollister had moments when he felt that he would hate her if she did,--a paradox he could not understand.
He slept--or at least tried to sleep--that night alone in his house. He cooked his breakfast and worked on the boom until midday, then climbed the hill to the camp and ate lunch with his men. He worked up there till evening and came down in the dusk. He dreaded that lonely house, those deserted rooms. But he forced himself to abide there. He had a dim idea of so disciplining his feelings, of attaining a numbed acquiescence in what he could not help.