He had seen quickly, guessed with a diabolic shrewdness, yet would remain on the surface, always, of a mystery so violent and so profound.

The young man stalked into his vacant nunnery in a rage, a dismal pomp of emotion: reason telling him that a friend had spoken sense, imagination clothing him in the sceptred pall of tragedy.
Yet one of these unwelcome words had stuck: he was Werther, it was true--a man who came too late.

Another word was soon fulfilled; for the hot weather came, sudden, tropical, ferocious.

Without gradation, the vernal days and languid noons were gone in a twinkling.

The change came like another act of a play.