Neither Harold nor Marian said anything on their walk back to her house. There was no need for Harold to fill the silence, nothing he had to sell. This was a rare luxury for him, one that he had only been able to engage in during his solitary train trips as he fled from one town to the next. Around Marian, Harold could simply be himself.

Not that he knew who that was, exactly. For almost as long as he could remember, Harold had assumed one persona or another, discarding it when it no longer suited his purposes. The boisterous and charming Professor Harold Hill had been one of his most lucrative characters, and the most fun to play. Even he had been mesmerized by this band leader extraordinaire – Harold no longer referred himself to any other name, not even in the privacy of his own mind. Marcellus' enthusiastic greeting of "Gregory!" – another alias – had been a bit jarring.

"I'll only be a minute," Marian promised with a smile when they reached her front door.

You'd better – or I'll have to come in after you! he thought mischievously. Once upon a time, Harold would have said this out loud. But now, he just winked and wagged his finger at her.

After Marian had gone into the house, Harold settled himself against a fencepost to await her return. Giddy as a schoolboy, he started to whistle, which soon turned into jovial singing: "While a hundred and ten cornets played the air! Then I modestly took my place, as the one and only bass, and I oompahed up and down the square – "

Marian's sweet voice faintly echoed from inside the Paroo home. "Good night, my someone, good night, my love…"

Grinning at Marian's silhouette in the window, Harold continued: " – with a hundred and ten cornets right behind!"

"… Our star is shining its brightest light…"

" – there were horns of every shape and…" Harold trailed off. He took the torn page from the Indiana Journal out of his pocket and looked at it. Solid proof he was a fraud, and Marian had held it to her breast like a love letter. Even knowing what he was, she had seen something in him – something she deemed so wonderful that it was worth covering up the truth.

Suddenly, Harold didn't feel like singing the hymn of a charlatan and a pretender. "Sweet dreams be yours, dear, if dreams there be…" The words fell softly, uncertainly from his lips.

"While a hundred and ten cornets played the air!" Marian's exuberant voice rang out.

Spellbound by this strange, swift onrush of emotion, Harold didn't even hear her. "I wish I may, and I wish I might, now goodnight, my someone… goodnight."

As hard as he had tried to resist, evade and explain it away with terms like tempted, bewitched and ensnared, the moment of reckoning had come at last:

I am in love with Marian Paroo. Utterly, hopelessly, desperately in love.

This realization didn't burst forth with brilliant fanfare like a seventy-piece orchestra, as Harold would have expected, but simply announced itself, as if it had been there all along. Love had stolen into his soul as gently and gradually as a fog rolling over the hills; while Harold had schemed and plotted to weave webs around Marian, love had been quietly entwining him in its inexorable Gordian knot.

Marcellus ran up to him, suitcase in hand. "Let's go, Greg, I've got the flivver in the alley, all cranked up!"

Everything was happening too fast for him to comprehend; Harold stood there numbly, looking back at the Paroo home. The room Marian had been standing in was now dark. Where was she?

His shill tugged on his arm. "They're onto you already! There's a crazy anvil salesman running all over town, spilling everything! Come on!"

When Marcellus took off running, Harold didn't follow. Even if he lost crucial seconds he needed to make his escape, he could not leave without saying a proper goodbye to Marian.

Mrs. Paroo came hurrying around the corner. "You'd better run, Professor! They're talking about tar and feathers!"

Finally, the front door opened and Marian came outside. "What is it, Mama?" she asked worriedly.

"I've been looking all over for Winthrop," Mrs. Paroo replied, stopping to catch her breath. "He's run away – maybe he's in his room!" The woman disappeared into the house, not even bothering to close the door behind her.

Marian ran over to Harold, a pained look in her eyes.

It was cruel their time together was suddenly cut so short. Harold knew he was only getting what he deserved, but he regretted that Marian had to suffer the same heartbreak. As he gazed longingly at the woman he loved, trying to cement her image in his mind before they parted forever, Harold couldn't help but smile a little bit at his foolishness. He was as bad as Romeo, as Lancelot, as Tristan, and every other man who had ever sacrificed everything for the love of a woman. But if he was given the chance to go back to the first day he arrived in River City, he wouldn't have done a single thing differently.

There was so much Harold wanted to tell Marian, but there wasn't enough time to say it all. "It's not often that I find myself at a loss for words, but – "

Even in her distress, Marian demonstrated her unselfish heart. "It's all right, don't you know that? You don't owe me a word – not a word! Now hurry, please!"

Earlier that evening, Marian had profusely thanked him for what he had given her, but Harold thought she had been the generous one. As fervent as her declarations of love had been, she hadn't asked him for a single thing, not even the courtesy of being loved in return. Now she was letting him go; her final gift to him. More than that – she was begging him to flee.

But Harold was tired of running. Even when Marcellus came back and frantically shouted for him to get going, he didn't move. Nothing could budge Harold from Marian's arms – not even the sound of an approaching angry mob.

Marcellus scurried around the corner to divert them. "He's not around here, folks! Let's try down by the creamery!"

Despondent as he was, Harold couldn't help but grin. Good old Marcellus, loyal until the bitter end.

Please, Marian's eyes pleaded. Don't do this.

I have to, he told her.

As the two of them stood there, at an impasse, a little boy with ginger-colored hair came barreling down the street toward the Paroo house.

"Winthrop!" Marian cried, running to her brother.

But Harold was quicker. "Hold on a minute, son!"

"I'm not your son. Leave me go!" the boy said furiously, trying to wriggle out of Harold's arms.

"No, not until I talk to you a minute," Harold insisted.

Winthrop glared at him. "I won't listen – you wouldn't tell the truth, anyway!"

"I would too," Harold insisted.

"Would not!"

"I would, tot! Tell you anything you want to know."

Winthrop gave him a frank, direct look. "Can you lead a band?"

Harold paused. "No," he admitted.

In Winthrop's tear-stained expression, Harold saw the sorrow and disillusionment of every child he had ever swindled. As he gazed repentantly at the kid who had once loved him like a father, he reflected that no Biblical hell of fire and brimstone could have inflicted a worse punishment than this. And it didn't help matters that the boy had his sister's eyes!

But Winthrop wasn't done with him yet. "Are you a big liar?"

This time, Harold's answer was faster. "Yes."

"Are you a dirty, rotten crook?"

"Yes," Harold said again, amazed at how easy it was to tell the truth once he had begun.

Winthrop's face crumpled. "Then leave me go, you big liar!"

Most men might have been too ashamed to do anything but comply with such a demand, but not Harold. He wasn't the type to go slinking off to the corner when he was berated; he took his lumps with as much flair as he did everything else. "Well, what's the matter? You wanted the truth, didn't you? Now look, I'm bigger than you are, and you're going to stand there and get it all, so you might just as well stop wiggling!"

Winthrop scowled, but did as he was told.

"Now," Harold began, straightening the little boy's rumpled collar, "there are two things you're entitled to know. One, you're a wonderful kid. I've thought so from the first! That's why I wanted you in the band, so you'd stop moping around and feeling sorry for yourself!"

"What band?" Winthrop asked coldly.

In reply, Harold told him the only principle he had ever lived by, the one saving grace that had always allowed him to walk through life with a smile on his face and a spring in his step, despite leaving a swath of destruction wherever he went: "I always think there's a band, kid."

Even though Winthrop might have been a little too young to fully understand the meaning, Harold's words seemed to resonate with him. "What's the other thing I'm entitled to know?" the boy asked, his voice calmer.

Harold glanced at Marian, who was gazing at him with a warm, wistful expression. He was immediately reminded of their passionate tryst at the footbridge. "Well, the other thing's none of your business, come to think of it!"

He had spoken in a sharper tone than he had meant to; Winthrop's face crumpled again. "I wish you'd never come to River City!"

Beaten at last, Harold could find nothing more to say.

Marian spoke. "No, you don't, Winthrop."

The boy turned to her with an incredulous expression. "Sister? You believe him?"

She knelt down and looked Winthrop in the eye. "I believe everything he ever said."

It was amazing how regret kept deepening and deepening, once it had got hold of a man. Just when Harold thought he couldn't feel any worse, Marian had to go and defend his actions to a boy who had – quite rightly – condemned him for the criminal he was.

"But he promised us!" Winthrop insisted.

"I know what he promised us," she said firmly. "And it all happened, just like he said: the lights, the colors, the cymbals and the flags!"

"Where was all that?"

"In the way every kid in town walked around all summer, and looked and acted – especially you," she explained. "And the parents, too. Does Mama wish he'd never come to River City?"

"Well, you do, don't you?" Winthrop asked – though the anger had gone out of his voice.

Marian's eyes grew sad. "No, Winthrop."

She would have made a wonderful mother, Harold thought wistfully.

Marian looked up. "You'd better go, Harold. Please!"

"Go on, Professor," the boy urged in a forlorn voice, brushing by Harold in a half-hearted hug as he walked toward the front door. "Hurry up…"

But Harold had made his decision. "I can't go, Winthrop."

Winthrop stopped and looked back. "Why not?"

Romeo, Lancelot, Tristan – you'd better go ahead and save a spot for me at the table, Harold thought wryly, before saying the words that would seal his fate for good: "Well, for the first time in my life, I got my foot caught in the door."

Turning to Marian, Harold beheld a sight that melted even his jaded heart: Marian's eyes glowing with the quiet joy of a woman who knew that, at long last, her dreams had come true. The last tiny speck of apprehension that had been lingering in the pit of Harold's stomach disappeared. No matter what happened, he would never regret his choice.

Harold took Marian's hands in his and helped her back to her feet.

There was love, all around, but I never heard it singing
No, I never heard it at all –

Marian threw her arms around him, and he held her tight. "… till there was you," he whispered into her hair.

So Harold Hill did the only decent thing he had ever done in his entire misspent life: He stayed and embraced the woman he loved, until the River City constable and his posse came to take him away.