As he made his way through the quiet Sunday morning streets, Wolf found that he had already decided, in the secret places of his mind, to look in at Christie’s before he started for King’s Barton. This decision quickened his steps, but it did not prevent him from being stared at with the usual vapid curiosity by the few lethargic idlers he encountered.

He tried to analyze, as he went along, the cause that intensified this curiosity, in certain particular eye-encounters, to a malignant hostility. He came to the conclusion that this occurred only when his own mind was especially harassed. It must be, he decided, the same psychic instinct that makes a flock of fowls attack the one that happens to be hurt or sick. Mentally, at such times, he was hurt⁠—he was actually bleeding invisible blood⁠—and it might easily be that this wounded “aura” excited some mysterious irritation in those who caught it.