CHAPTER X.A SINGULAR COUNCIL.
The four sat together under the shadow of the helmsman, by whom they were regarded as voyagers in debate upon the question of some hours further on salt water.

'No bora,' he threw in at intervals, to assure them that the obnoxious wind of the Adriatic need not disturb their calculations.
It was an extraordinary sitting, but none of the parties to it thought of it so when Nevil Beauchamp had plunged them into it.

He compelled them, even Renee--and she would have flown had there been wings on her shoulders--to feel something of the life and death issues present to his soul, and submit to the discussion, in plain language of the market-place, of the most delicate of human subjects for her, for him, and hardly less for the other two.

An overmastering fervour can do this.
It upsets the vessel we float in, and we have to swim our way out of deep waters by the directest use of the natural faculties, without much reflection on the change in our habits.

To others not under such an influence the position seems impossible.