"Truggles, you've won your point," said Forsythe, and there was no animosity in his voice. "I don't need to experiment any more. I'm leaving Marston Hill with my wife and son...."
He caught himself and looked at Allison.
"I can't hold her," said Allison in a low tone. "I won't try to. I'll give her a divorce."
"... With my only wife and son," resumed Forsythe happily. "I'm going to find my other children. And I don't think any of you will ever hear of us again."
He turned and entered the house with Phyllis and Donald. Allison followed them, his head bowed.
Truggles sat in his small, sparsely-furnished room and fought his soul.
For a long time, the memory of what the boy Donald had somehow shown the people of Marston Hill lingered with him: the conception of a world that was all good, all beauty, everything right. Truggles tried to cling to it, but gradually it slipped from him. There was something in him that prevented him holding it. At last, he still could remember it, but the memory was a logical thing, a thing that was incredible to him because it had no roots in emotion.
As that happened, the old torment returned ten-fold, as though it had battered outside of the vision's barrier fruitlessly until it could burst on him with renewed vigor.
Writhing inwardly, twisting his hands, Truggles stared unseeing at the room about him while he relived the agony of the past. He held Margaret—how long, how many years had it been, since he had let himself even think that name?—he held her in his arms and felt her cool lips against his. He talked with her, he felt the closeness of something infinitely good and right for him.