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on the other side of the room, stopped long enough to refill Burton's glass.
    “Yes, I do believe some such law exists,” said Burton. “I find the Hindu notion of karma more alluring than the Catholic absurdity of original sin.”
    “How is Isabel?” put in Bendyshe, who'd stepped across to join them.
    Burton ignored the mischievous question and went on, “At least karma provides a counterbalance-a penalty or reward, if you like-to acts we actually perform and thoughts we actually think, rather than punishing us for the supposed sin of our actual existence or for a transgression against a wholly artificial dictate of so-called morality. It is a function of Nature rather than a judgement of an unproven God.”
    “By Jove! Stanley was correct when he wrote that you're a heathen!” mocked Bendyshe. “Burton joins with Darwin and says there is no God!”
    “Actually, Darwin hasn't suggested any such thing. It is others who have imposed that interpretation upon his Origin of Species.”
    “`There is no God, Nature sufficeth unto herself; in no wise bath she need of an author,”' quoted Swinburne. “De Sade again.”
    “In many respects I consider him laughable,” commented Burton, “but in that instance, I wholeheartedly agree. The more I study religions, the more I'm convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself.”
    He quoted his own poetry:
    “Man worships self his God is man; the struggling of the mortal mind to firm its model as 'twould be, the pea fect of itself to find. ”
    Milnes took a drag from his cigar and blew a smoke ring, which rose lazily into the air. He watched it slowly disperse and said, “But this karma business, Richard-what you are proposing is that one way or another, through some sort of entirely natural process, a murderer will receive retribution. Do you then count man's judgement-the death penalty-to be natural?”
    “We are natural beings, are we not?”
    “Well,” interrupted Bendyshe, “I sometimes wonder about Swinburne.”
    It was a fair point, thought Burton, for Swinburne was a very unnaturallooking man. At just five-foot-two, he had a strangely tiny body. His limbs were small and delicate, with sloping shoulders and a very long neck upon which sat a large head made even bigger by a tousled mass of carroty-red hair standing almost at right angles to it. His mouth was weak and effeminate; his eyes huge, pale green, and dreamy.
    Few poets looked so much a poet as Algernon Charles Swinburne.
    “But that aside,” said Bendyshe, “what if the murderer avoids the noose?”
    “Guilt,” proposed Burton. “A gradual but inescapable degradation of the character. A degenerative disease of the mind. Maybe a descent into madness and self-destruction.”
    “Or perhaps,” offered Swinburne, “a tendency to mix with criminal types until the murderer is himself, inevitably, murdered.”
    “Well put!” agreed the famous adventurer.
    “Interesting,” pondered Milnes, “but, I say, we all know that murders are committed either in the heat of passion, or else with intent by an individual who's already in an advanced-if that's the appropriate word-state of mental decay. What if, though, a murder was calculated and committed by an intelligent man who performs the act only out of scientific curiosity? What if it were done only to transcend the limitations that tell us it shouldn't be done?”
    “An idle motive,” suggested Burton.
    “Not at all, dear boy!” declared Milnes. “It's a magnificent motive! Why, the man who would undertake such an act would risk his immortal soul for science!”
    “He would undoubtedly see sense and back away from the experiment,” said Burton, his voice slurring slightly, “for once crossed, that barrier allows no return. However, his decision would be based on self-determined standards of behaviour rather than on any set out by civilisation or on notions of an immortal soul; for as you say, he's an intelligent man.”
    “It's