In examples taken from folklore, the key to having supernatural power over someone is to know their “true name.” Collier recalls this legend upon revealing that the proprietor of the store knows Alan Austen’s name before the fact of it is mentioned. Though we enter the story imagining that Alan is the director of his fate, but by the end we understand that he is the puppet of forces beyond his imagination.

Alan is a victim of a tradition he knows nothing of, one designed to profit from his ignorance. The proprietor, and not Alan, is in control. Further development of Alan’s character, according to the story’s ruthless logic, can only happen when he mirrors the older man’s cynicism. At the end of his journey, he will be wiser, and wealthy enough to afford an expensive murder weapon, but no closer to the love he was seeking.

Victim though he is, Alan Austen is also the author of his own problems. With a modicum of practiced sociability and empathy, or the development of his imagination, he could see that the impulse to demand someone else’s love is tantamount to taking their life. Above all, the development of Alan Austen’s character is tied to his inability to see love as anything but an instrumental symptom of his own selfish desire.