She was crying openly now. The boy took her by the arm and led her to the crusted window. She turned her face away from the light—away from him. The boy said: "He was my teacher. I worship him. What I'm doing now may seem like treachery, but it's only treachery to his old age. I'm keeping faith with what he was thirty years ago—with the man who would have done the same thing to his teacher."
She cried: "But are you keeping faith with me? You, who will have all the joy of destroying and none of the tedious sweeping away the pieces. What of my life and all the weary years to come when I must coddle him and soothe him and lead him through the madness of forgetting what you've done to him?"
"You'll spend your life with me. I break no faith with you, Barbara."
She laughed bitterly. "How easily you evade reality. I shall spend my life with you—and in that short sentence, poof!"—she flicked her hand—"you dismiss everything. Where will he live? Alone? With us? Where?"
"That can be arranged."
"You're so stubborn, so pig-headed in your smug, righteous truth-seeking. Steven—for the very last time—please. Wait until he's gone. A few years, that's all. Leave him in peace. Leave us in peace."
He shook his head and started toward the oaken doors. "A few years waiting to salvage the pride of an old man, a few more catastrophies, a few more thousand lives lost—it doesn't add up."
She sagged against the window, silhouetted before the riot of color, and watched him cross to the doors. All the tears seemed drained out of her. She was so limp I thought she would fall to the floor at any instant. And then, as I watched her, I saw her stiffen and I realized that another figure had entered the foyer and was rushing toward the boy. It was an oldish man, bald and with an ageless face of carved ivory. He was tall and terribly thin. His eyes were little pits of embers.
He called: "Steven!"
The boy stopped and turned.