"ξυνώμοσαν γὰρ, ὄντες ἔχθιστοι τὸ πρὶν,
πῦρ καὶ θάλασσα—"
"xunômosan gar, ontes echtistoi to prin,
pur kai thalassa—"
Fancy the well-iced conventionalities of the one brought in contact with the other's savage temperament, maddened by baffled desires and the sense of shameful defeat.
Before noon the next day it was announced to Lady Catharine, at Kerton Manor, that Bruce was waiting for her in the drawing-room. It was with a diffidence and sense of guilt very strange to her pure, straightforward nature that she obeyed the summons.
His back was to the door as she entered.
"I can not tell you how sorry I am," she began.
Bruce turned toward her his ghastly face, ravaged and deformed by passion and sleeplessness, like a cane-brake in the Western Indies over which a tornado has passed. He did not appear to notice her words or her offered hand, but spoke in a strange, broken voice, after clearing his parched throat once or twice, huskily:
"When did they go? At what hour?"