By this time he'd learnt that there was a trustworthy logic to happenstance which would deliver to him the next step to be taken if only he was quiet enough to discern it. The pattern of his life once set would not change in unpredictable ways, but continue to circle around the same basic themes. These may have been quite contingent, but to be so as words in a larger discourse to which he was also entitled. It was easier to see this reassuring picture in the lives of others than his own, where it was often obscured by thoughts which arose from near-sighted views of events. These thought were also repetitions, but were centrifugal and tactical; where they seemed most to belong to him was where their greatest betrayal lay.