They were a band of vampires.

Habit and discipline alone saved him from breaking his pose and fleeing headlong.
But there he was fixed, like marble, in an athlete's attitude, showing rippling muscles of neck and chest and arms and thighs all developed by the gymnasium into the perfection of Greek beauty, and all useless, more useless even, as far as the world's work was concerned, than the muscles of a racehorse.

There he was fixed, with outstretched limbs and strained loins, a human being far more alive than the peering, measuring throng, far more important, called by a destiny infinitely higher than theirs.

And none of them suspected it.

For the first time he saw himself as they saw him.