He knew that each one of these men stood at the extreme end, so to speak, of some wild road of reasoning.

He could only fancy, as in some old-world fable, that if a man went westward to the end of the world he would find something--say a tree--that was more or less than a tree, a tree possessed by a spirit; and that if he went east to the end of the world he would find something else that was not wholly itself--a tower, perhaps, of which the very shape was wicked.

So these figures seemed to stand up, violent and unaccountable, against an ultimate horizon, visions from the verge.

The ends of the earth were closing in.
Talk had been going on steadily as he took in the scene; and not the least of the contrasts of that bewildering breakfast-table was the contrast between the easy and unobtrusive tone of talk and its terrible purport.

They were deep in the discussion of an actual and immediate plot.