To Dick the last day or two had been nightmares of loneliness. He threw
caution to the winds and walked hour after hour, only to find that
the street crowds, people who had left a home or were going to one,
depressed him and emphasized his isolation. He had deliberately put
away from him the anchor that had been Elizabeth and had followed a
treacherous memory, and now he was adrift. He told himself that he did
not want much. Only peace, work and a place. But he had not one of them.

He was homesick for David, for Lucy, and, with a tightening of the
heart he admitted it, for Elizabeth. And he had no home. He thought of
Reynolds, bent over the desk in his office; he saw the quiet tree-shaded
streets of the town, and Reynolds, passing from house to house in the
little town, doing his work, usurping his place in the confidence and
friendship of the people; he saw the very children named for him asking:
"Who was I named for, mother?" He saw David and Lucy gone, and the
old house abandoned, or perhaps echoing to the laughter of Reynolds'
children.

He had moments when he wondered what would happen if he took Beverly at
her word. Suppose she made her confession, re-opened the thing, to fill
the papers with great headlines, "Judson Clark Not Guilty. A Strange
Story."