what is _______?

Maybe Mrs Cartwright had been a hellcat in her youth, Tom thought, maybe she was responsible for every one of her daughter's neuroses, maybe she had clutched her daughter so closely to her that it had been impossible for the daughter to lead a normal life and marry, and maybe she deserved to be kicked overboard instead of walked around the deck and listened to for hours while she talked, but what did it matter? Did the world always mete out just deserts? Had the world meted his out to him? He considered that he had been lucky beyond reason in escaping detection for two murders, lucky from the time he had assumed Dickie's identity until now. In the first part of his life fate had been grossly unfair, he thought, but the period with Dickie and afterwards had more than compensated for it. But something was going to happen now in Greece, he felt, and it couldn't be good. His luck had held just too long. But supposing they got him on the fingerprints, and on the will, and they gave him the electric chair -- could that death in the electric chair equal in pain, or could death itself, at twenty-five, be so tragic, that he could not say that the months from November until now had not been worth it? Certainly not.

Highsmith, Patricia. The Talented Mr Ripley. Penguin Books: London UK, 1955, 244.