Or has it not, really?  I looked at that pale face and knew that he was not ready for that final stroke of the second.  No matter what he says, no matter how much a parody he may seem to me, no matter how much I despised him when her mother started bitching behind me and he didn't oppose and stand up for his nephew, I knew he was not as ready as he had appeared.  I knew that he was distressingly helpless against this Fate whose control he had lost so long ago that it was too hard for him to visualize what it was like before. 