Just when I thought I would not learn the truth of Falkland till the very end of the book, he declared it himself in just the next paragraph.
To tell the truth, I feel an unexplained hurt and discord when I reflect on Falkland's character, the setting and the events in the story. I guess that would be called verisimilitude. To experience something so brutally ugly in a human being and recognize it instantly as very possible. That what seems to be true, is true, and as in the story we must trust to what seems right or not right to guide us to the truth about a person.
The story has told me so much of what I already know, it hurts sometimes. I understand the story is not about myself or my problems, but it is like a faceted crystal one can turn around in the sunlight. Interactive, reflective, many-faced.