They met three other women, busy at various tasks, all of them young and attractive. Truggles questioned them briefly. He found substantially the same reaction he had received from Trella.
When they had mounted the wide stairs again, on their way back to the office, Truggles was introduced to another wife, Lois. The door of a room stood ajar as they came to it, and he happened to see her sitting inside, weeping.
He thought Trella appeared reluctant when he stopped and pushed open the door, but she did not protest.
"Why are you weeping, my child?" asked Truggles, after he had talked with her for a moment.
"I must leave," she explained. "I've been married to Blan two years tomorrow, and I haven't given him a child."
"That's the most inhuman thing I ever heard of!" he exclaimed. "Do you mean to say he gives you this little time of happiness, and then if you don't produce progeny for him he casts you off like an old shoe?"
"It's Dr. Allison's advice to him," said Lois. "Dr. Allison thinks it would be bad for him to have too many wives around at one time, and he considers two years long enough to prove certainly whether a woman can be fertile with Blan. I'm not the first. I won't be the last. But it's hard to have to go away and never see him again."
These women he had seen today, these wives of Forsythe: they aroused no bitter feelings in Truggles. He felt clean and strong talking to them. They were like the many women to whom he had held out sympathy and understanding over the years, who had been stubborn and wilful at first, only to melt at last and see the truth. If only he could get them from Forsythe's influence, he thought he could save these women.
Truggles turned to Trella.
"Do you see what's in store for you, young woman?" he demanded. "Do you still think it's worth ruining your life to live here in sin with this man?"