Evolution is simply the process by which chance (the random mutations in the nucleic acid helix caused by natural radiation) cooperates with natural law to cre-ate living forms better and better adapted to survive.

—Martin Gardner, The Ambidextrous Universe (1967)

True piety is acting what one knows.

—Matthew Arnold, Notebooks (1868)

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It is a time-proven rule of the novelist’s craft never to introduce any but very minor new characters at the end of a book. I hope Lalage may be forgiven; but the extremely important-looking person that has, during the last scene, been leaning against the parapet of the embankment across the way from 16 Cheyne Walk, the residence of Mr. Dante Gabriel Rossetti (who took—and died of—chloral, by the way, not opium) may seem at first sight to represent a gross breach of the rule. I did not want to introduce him; but since he is the sort of man who cannot bear to be left out of the limelight, the kind of man who travels first class or not at all, for whom the first is the only pronoun, who in short has first things on the brain, and since I am the kind of man who refuses to intervene in nature (even the worst), he has got himself in—or as he would put it, has got himself in as he really is. I shall not labor the implication that he was previ-ously got in as he really wasn’t, and is therefore not truly a new character at all; but rest assured that this personage is, in spite of appearances, a very minor figure—as minimal, in fact, as a gamma-ray particle.

As he really is….and his true colors are not pleasant ones. The once full, patriarchal beard of the railway com-partment has been trimmed down to something rather fop-pish and Frenchified. There is about the clothes, in the lavishly embroidered summer waistcoat, in the three rings on the fingers, the panatella in its amber holder, the malachite-headed cane, a distinct touch of the flashy. He looks very much as if he has given up preaching and gone in for grand opera; and done much better at the latter than the former. There is, in short, more than a touch of the successful impresario about him.

And now, as he negligently supports himself on the para-pet, he squeezes the tip of his nose lightly between the knuckles of his beringed first and middle fingers. One has the impression he can hardly contain his amusement. He is star-ing back towards Mr. Rossetti’s house; and with an almost proprietory air, as if it is some new theater he has just bought and is pretty confident he can fill. In this he has not changed: he very evidently regards the world as his to possess and use as he likes.

But now he straightens. This flanerie in Chelsea has been a pleasant interlude, but more important business awaits him. He takes out his watch—a Breguet—and selects a small key from a vast number on a second gold chain. He makes a small adjustment to the time. It seems—though unusual in an instrument from the bench of the greatest of watchmakers— that he was running a quarter of an hour fast. It is doubly strange, for there is no visible clock by which he could have discovered the error in his own timepiece. But the reason may be guessed. He is meanly providing himself with an excuse for being late at his next appointment. A certain kind of tycoon cannot bear to seem at fault over even the most trivial matters.

He beckons peremptorily with his cane towards an open landau that waits some hundred yards away. It trots smartly up to the curb beside him. The footman springs down and opens the door. The impresario mounts, sits, leans expansive-ly back against the crimson leather, dismisses the mono-grammed rug the footman offers towards his legs. The footman catches the door to, bows, then rejoins his fellow servant on the box. An instruction is called out, the coachman touches his cockaded hat with his whip handle.

And the equipage draws briskly away.

“No. It is as I say. You have not only planted the dagger in my breast, you have delighted in twisting it.” She stood now staring at Charles, as if against her will, but hypnotized, the defiant criminal awaiting sentence. He pronounced it. “A day will come when you shall be called to account for what you have done to me. And if there is justice in heaven—your punishment shall outlast eternity!”

He hesitated one last second; his face was like the poised-crumbling walls of a dam, so vast was the weight of anathe-ma pressing to roar down. But as suddenly as she had looked guilty, he ground his jaws shut, turned on his heel and marched towards the door.

“Mr. Smithson!”

He took a step or two more; stopped, threw her a look back over his shoulder; and then with the violence of a determined unforgivingness, stared at the foot of the door in front of him. He heard the light rustle of her clothes. She stood just behind him.

“Is this not proof of what I said just now? That we had better never to have set eyes on each other again?”

“Your logic assumes that I knew your real nature. I did not.”

“Are you sure?”

“I thought your mistress in Lyme a selfish and bigoted woman. I now perceive she was a saint compared to her companion.”

“And I should not be selfish if I said, knowing I cannot love you as a wife must, you may marry me?”

Charles gave her a freezing look. “There was a time when you spoke of me as your last resource. As your one remain-ing hope in life. Our situations are now reversed. You have no time for me. Very well. But don’t try to defend yourself. It can only add malice to an already sufficient injury.”

It had been in his mind all through: his most powerful, though also his most despicable, argument. And as he said it, he could not hide his trembling, his being at the end of his tether, at least as regards his feeling of outrage. He threw her one last tortured look, then forced himself onward to open the door.

“Mr. Smithson!”

Again. And now he felt her hand on his arm. A second time he stood arrested, hating that hand, his weakness in letting it paralyze him. It was as if she were trying to tell him something she could not say in words. No more, perhaps, than a gesture of regret, of apology. Yet if it had been that, her hand would surely have fallen as soon as it to............