Naturally Toffee had not been in Marc's mind at all these last few months. For one thing he had been much too concerned with the perilous state of the world, and Toffee, not a consistent inhabitant of this world, or much of any other, was difficult to picture in conjunction with truly worldly matters.
If it could be said that Toffee lived at all, it would have to be the Valley of Marc's mind. Not that she wasn't quite real; it was just that she did not exist materially unless she was projected into the material world through Marc's imagination. After that she was as flesh and blood as anyone—indeed, to an almost overwhelming degree at times.
If Marc had grown used to this strange circumstance—that his mind could actually create a living, breathing perfect hellion of a redhead—it was only by virtue of repetition. The human mind can adjust to the wildest of impossibilities in time, if it is only subjected to them often enough.
The smile grew on Marc's lips as he considered the provocative form and features of Toffee. It was a vision to prod the sternest lips into a smile.
Then the smile vanished as Julie's footsteps sounded outside in the hallway. Marc listened to their approach, turning his eyes toward the door.
He could almost see her standing there in the hallway beyond the closed door. Desolated with remorse, she would be, undecided. A trickle of compassion gullied the surface of Marc's resentment. After all, she had really meant to hurt him. He would have called out to her, but the footsteps sounded anew and retreated down the hall. A moment later a door opened and closed. Marc sighed; tomorrow would be time enough to make it up to her.
He closed his eyes as a slow drowsiness began to seep through his lean body—probably the sedatives going to work. His mind wandered aimlessly for a moment, then collided, quite forcibly, with a sudden realization; during the last hour—for the first time in weeks—his thoughts had turned away from the dismal state of the world and centered on himself. For a whole hour his interest had been entirely absorbed in a simple domestic crisis—a little thing like a fight over the radio!
Marc's mind spun with the thought. In the last few months things—the matters of men's lives—had somehow gotten themselves all turned around backwards. People had ceased to concern themselves with the really important things—fighting over a radio, for instance—and had turned to the childish business of blowing up the world.
Marc paused to sum up these thoughts. Somewhere they contained a very great and very simple truth, though they were all snarled up. Somehow his dislocated sacroiliac and the troubles of the world were subtly related....