folded arms, puffing at his pipe, a suggestion of genial malice on his face, throwing out a phrase here and there that set the pack about him leaping like hungry dogs to the lure of food.  In confused moments Fred Starratt fell to wondering whether he really had escaped from Fairview, whether the forms about him were not the same motley assembly that used to gather in the open and exchange whines.  The wails now seemed keyed to howls of defiance, but the source was essentially the same.

Fred wondered how he lived through these dreadful evenings with the air thick to choking.  Indeed, he used to wonder what had saved him from death at any stage of the game.  Storch had permitted him the use of a maggoty couch, had shared scraps of indifferent food at irregular intervals, and set a cracked pitcher of water within reach.  But beyond that, he had been ignored.  The nightly assembly did not even cast their glances his way.

During the day Fred was left alone for the most part, and he felt a certain luxury in this personal solitude after the months at Fairview with its unescapable human contacts.  He would lie there, his ears still ringing with the echoes from the nightly gathering of malcontents, trying to reconstruct his own quarrel with life.  He had a feeling that he would remain a silent onlooker only until Storch decreed otherwise.  If he stayed long enough the night would come when Storch would call upon him for a testimonial of hatred.  He knew that deep down somewhere within him rancors were stirring to sinister life.  He had experienced the first glimmerings of cruelty in that moment when he had felt Brauer tremble under his grasp.  What would have been his reaction to physical fear on Helen Starratt’s part?  Suppose on that afternoon when he had watched her wheeling Mrs. Hilmer up and down with deceitful patience he had gone over and struck her the blow which was primitively her portion?  Would the sight of her whimpering fear have stirred him to further elemental cruelties?  Would he have ended by killing her? ...  Physically weak as he was, he could still feel the thrill of cruelty that had shaken him at the realization of Brauer’s dismay.  As a child, when a truant gust of deviltry had swept him, he had felt the same satisfaction in pummeling a comrade who backed away from friendly cuffs turned instantly to blows of malice.  Even now he had occasionally a desire to seek out Brauer again and worry him further.  He was fearing indifference.  What if, after all that he had suffered at the hands of others, he should find himself in the pale clutch of an impotent indifference?  He felt a certain shame back of the possibility, and at such moments the words of Storch used to ring in his ears: 

“Wounds heal so quickly ... so disgustingly quickly!”

And again, watching Storch at night, touching the quivering cords which might otherwise have rusted in inactive silence, he remembered further the introduction to this contemptuous phrase: