Take Les Miserables. The hero steals a loaf of bread and is sent to prison. He cannot stand it, so he tries to escape; he draws a longer sentence. When he is finally released, he is an outcast. He comes to a town where nobody will lodge him or serve him dinner. Then he sees a house with an open door—the house of the local bishop. This very well-drawn, altruistic bishop invites him to stay, serves him a meal, and treats him with all the deference due an honored guest. The ex-convict notices the bishop's only valuable possessions: real silverware and two silver candelabra on the mantelpiece. In the middle of the night, the trusted ex-convict steals the silverware and escapes.

Given the man's enormously embittered state, the reader can understand why he makes this choice. It is an evil choice, but it proceeds from the previous events of the story.

Then he is caught and brought back to the bishop by local policemen who recognize the silverware. They tell the bishop: "We've caught this ex-convict and he says that you gave him the silverware." And the bishop says: "Yes, of course I gave it to him. But, my friend, why did you forget to take the candelabra, which I also gave you?" The police depart, and the bishop tells the ex-convict: "Take this silver. With it I am buying your soul from the devil and giving it to God."

That is a scene. It is a beautifully dramatic example of turning the other cheek.

The bishop believes that his action will have a good effect; and the hero does reform, though not immediately. But everything he does is always conditioned by what he concluded (or misconcluded) from a previous event; and the actions of the police thereafter are always conditioned by their suspicion of him. The events are determined by the goals that the characters want to accomplish, and each event is necessitated by the preceding one—necessitated not deterministically, but logically. "If A, then B logically had to follow."