He had steeled himself to see it all, and on Saturday when the storm had subsided, and the little train started up the mountainside, his face was a gray mask, and the nearer the top he came, the more impassive, the grayer was his face. A little turn of a boulder and he knew he 'd see the ruin. A few piles and the welter of the swollen river attacking them. His eyes were open, but he saw nothing. The official beside him suddenly screamed.
"My God! Excellency! The bridge!"
"Yes, I know. The bridge is down."
"The bridge is there. Excellency, the bridge is there!"
All Lovat could do was to laugh, a vacant laugh. Yes, it was there. But it was so impossible. The sun suddenly flashed behind it, and he saw the arrogant white structure soar like a bird, joining green hill to green hill. Beneath it rolled an unknown river, not the tumbling, snarling river of a week before, but a brown concave current, become gigantic, flying northward to the greatest of waters and carrying on its thewed back death and desolation. There was something that looked like a man and then an ox. And here was the wreckage of a homestead. And there was a jaguar and here was a great serpent of the jungle, and now a horse and here a gigantic tree. But the bridge spurned the river, floated on it like a swan. Lovat jumped off on the platform.
"It holds! It stays!" he cried exultantly. He rushed toward the house. "Cecily, it holds!"
But he felt, as he flung open the door, that the house was empty.
"Cecily! Where are you, Cecily?"
There was no one there but a weeping, terrified maid.
"Where is Madame? Where is your señora?"