The hour was come, the elements were there, but since he could not abandon himself to their dominion the voluptuousness was wanting.

The task before him haunted him with anticipatory remorse.

It hung upon his spirit like a sick man's dream.
It obtruded itself upon his constant thought, and the more he pondered it the more did he sicken at what lay before him.
Wrought upon by Everard's fanaticism that day in Paris some three weeks ago, infected for the time being by something of his adoptive father's fever, he had set his hands to the task in a glow of passionate exaltation.

But with the hour, the exaltation went, and reaction started in his soul.

And yet draw back he dared not; too long and sedulously had Everard trained his spirit to look upon the avenging of his mother as a duty.