I never saw, in any painting or reality, horror and compassion so impressively blended. He shook as if he would have fallen; and his hand — I touched it with my own, for his appearance alarmed me — was deadly cold.

‘She is in a state of frenzy,’ I whispered to him.

‘She will speak differently in a little time.’

I don’t know what he would have said in answer. He made some motion with his mouth, and seemed to think he had spoken; but he had only pointed to her with his outstretched hand.

A new burst of crying came upon her now, in which she once more hid her face among the stones, and lay before us, a prostrate image of humiliation and ruin. Knowing that this state must pass,