It was a sense of chillness and unreality that made Gervase Hastings the most miserable of the ten miserable guests annually assembled at the Christmas Banquet. Year after year, in accordance with the founder’s bequest, the flaring torches mingled their golden splendor with the purple of the dusky curtains in the somber, wreath-hung hall. Year after year the guests assembled, only each time to murmur at the bestowal of the cypress-wreath upon the only one of their number who seemed to have no grief. But his misfortune was the deepest of all: he felt no strong emotion of any kind. Joy moved him not; nor grief. Men passed before him like shadows on the wall. His children came coldly to his knees. His wife wept in secret at the desolation of her life. His riches, his cultivated and scholarly taste, his library—none of these things alleviated his misfortune; he was the most miserable of human beings …
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