He lived again the angry, shouting interview when she stood with the arm of the Brazilian, De Castro, around her shoulders and said: "I'm sorry, Masefield. I like you and for a while I thought it was something more. But I've found love with a man who's so far superior to either of us that I still can't believe he's mine."
"That foreigner?" he shouted again, and tears sprang to his eyes as they had then. "You turn me down for him? You think I'm inferior to him?"
And again he lived through the shame of falling on his knees before her, turning up his weeping face to her, imploring her to no avail. He saw on her face and the Brazilian's face the pity, the scorn, before they walked out together, leaving him to sob alone.
Truggles beat his hands helplessly on the arm of the chair. Of all the hapless people he had tracked down and tossed to the ravening, outraged contempt of the public, he had wanted most of all to conquer Forsythe. He had wanted to see Forsythe cower and whimper, beg before they hung him.
And Forsythe had won. What mattered it that he was leaving Marston Hill? Truggles had thought that would be a victory, to make Forsythe run away. But Forsythe was not going alone and hunted. He was taking with him the woman he loved, who reminded Truggles of the clean beauty of Margaret; the one woman who understood him as none of those others could.
And the boy. Was it a defeat to a man to know that his son was greater than he? Truggles knew it was not. A vision rose before him of a race of men and women who walked among the clouds, who saw only beauty in the world and looked down with sympathetic pity upon the poor creeping humans below. The new race, greater than Truggles could even imagine himself.
Truggles stirred, and awoke to his surroundings, bitterly. He would have to leave Marston Hill himself. The people would not thank him for arousing them against Forsythe. From them, he could expect only anger, contempt, perhaps even....
There was a sudden rattling behind him. Truggles jumped to his feet, alarmed, fearful, his heart beating fast. His apprehensive eyes searched the room.
A paper moved in a corner. It was only a mouse.