What does this sentence means in "The Interlopers"? "The chance had come to give full play to the passions of a lifetime."The question is about...

As Ulrich von Gradwitz patrols the dark forest in "The
Interlopers," he steps around a huge tree trunk; then, by chance he suddenly confronts
the very enemy he seeks:  Georg Znaeym. This random act of fate, or chance, brings
together two men who have passionately hated each other all their lives since they have
been the "inheritors of the quarrel" between their grandfathers over a strip "of
precipitous woodland." 

In this astounding instant of
recognition of enmity, the two men who have hate in their hearts and murder on their
minds--"the passions of a lifetime"--hesitate but a brief moment.  However, that
infinitestimal instant is long enough for Nature, also by chance, to send boughs of the
massive beech tree upon them, pinning them and rendering them incapable of serving their
vengeance upon one another. This act of the untamable forest serves as the nemesis of
the two men who have been so consummed in the passions of their lifetime that they have
underestimated the power of Nature to control men's lives.  For, although they reconcile
their differences under the dire conditions in which they are captive, their turn of
conscience is too late.  With a sense of their fatality, Ulrich with a humorous laugh
tells Georg that it is wolves, not men, that they hear
approaching.