Now, as Stricklend sits in his prestigious office, sipping his expensive brandy, certain of his place in the world and his purpose in it, he still feels the importance of that moment in shaping his life. It was, it seems, destined that he should have been cast out and ridiculed in order to gain entry into an altogether more desirable society. He had, not surprisingly, never heard of the Sentinels. Never, previously, seen anything remarkable about the young teacher who had drilled him and the rest of his class in Latin verbs and challenged them to decline the same over and over, regardless of the hour or the wit of the boys, until they were word perfect. That pursuit of perfection should have alerted him to something, he now thinks. But how could he ever have imagined such things as Ellis was to teach him? How could he ever have dreamed of the power, and the purity of the power, that was to be given him by being taken into their fold?

He runs a finger down the line of his nose, tracing the kink where the bone had set askew and inflicted a lasting flaw in his own perfection, leaving him with a permanent memento of the beating that altered both his face and his future that night.