"Don‘t move, LaFarge!" Spaulding had a gun.
And now it was evident what had happened. Tom flashing through the moonlit streets, alone, passing people. A policeman seeing the figure dart past. The policeman pivoting, stared at the face, calling a name, giving pursuit. "You stop!" Seeing a criminal face. All along the way, the same thing, men here, women there, night watchmen, rocket pilots. The swift figure meaning everything to them, all identities, all persons, all names. How many different faces shaped over Tom‘s face, all wrong?
All down the way the pursued and the pursuing, the dream and the dreamers, the quarry and the hounds. All down the way the sudden revilement, the flash of familiar eyes, the cry of an old, old name, the remembrances of other times. The crowd multiplying. Everyone leaping forward as, like an image reflected from ten thousand mirrors, ten thousand eyes, the running dream came and went, a different face to those ahead, those behind, those yet to be met, those unseen.
And here they all are now, at the boat, wanting the dream for their own, just as we want him to be Tom, not Lavinia or William or Roger or any other, thought LaFarge. But it‘s all done now. The thing has gone too far.
"Come up, all of you!" Spaulding ordered them.
Tom stepped up from the boat. Spaulding seized his wrist. "You‘re coming home with me. I know."
"Wait," said the policeman. "He‘s my prisoner. Name‘s Dexter wanted for murder."
"No!" a woman sobbed "It’s my husband! I guess I know my husband!"
Other voices objected. The crowd thickened about him, putting out their wild hands, seizing and demanding. Tom screamed.
Before their eyes he changed.
He was Tom and James and a man named Switchman, another named Butterfield; he was the town mayor and a young girl Judith and the husband William and the wife Clarisse. He was melting wax shaping to their minds. They shouted, they pressed forward, pleading. He screamed, threw out his hands, his face dissolving to each demand.