  It is argued that the hollowness effect (depletion in the absorptive part of
the scattering cross section at small values of the impact parameter) in the
proton-proton scattering at the the LHC energies finds its origin in the
quantum nature of the process, resulting in large values of the real part of
the eikonal phase. The effect cannot be reconciled with an incoherent
superposition of the absorption from the proton constituents, thus suggests the
change of this basic paradigm of high-energy scattering.
