He walked hastily on, angrily blaming his nerves. As he passed the
policeman he fancied he noticed that the man glanced at him with a
certain flickering suspicion. Was horror legibly written in his face?
he wondered uneasily, confessing to himself that even in the dawn and
the lap of Grosvenor Place a horror had again seized him. What did this
shadow which he had now twice seen portend? Surely his nerves were not
permanently upset. He was at first heartily ashamed of himself. Near St.
George's Hospital, gaunt and grey in the morning, he stopped again, bent
his left arm forcibly, and with his right hand felt the hard lump of
muscle, that sprang up like a ball of iron under his coat sleeve. And
as he felt it he cursed himself for the greatest of all fools. Thin,
meagre little men of the town, tea-party men whose thoughts were ever
on their ties and their moustaches, no doubt gave themselves up readily
to disturbances of the nerves. But Julian had always prided himself on
being an athlete, able to hold his own in the world by mere muscular
force, if need be. He had found it possible to develop side by side brain
and biceps, each to an adequate end. It had seemed grand to him to hold
these scales of his being evenly, to balance them to a hair.
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