gigantic body
keeps the sea, as with a hand, to right and left.

Nevil's personal rapture craved for Renee with the second long breath
he drew; and now the curtain of her tent-cabin parted, and greeting him
with a half smile, she looked out. The Adriatic was dark, the Alps had
heaven to themselves. Crescents and hollows, rosy mounds, white shelves,
shining ledges, domes and peaks, all the towering heights were in
illumination from Friuli into farthest Tyrol; beyond earth to the
stricken senses of the gazers. Colour was stedfast on the massive front
ranks: it wavered in the remoteness, and was quick and dim as though
it fell on beating wings; but there too divine colour seized and shaped
forth solid forms, and thence away to others in uttermost distances
where the incredible flickering gleam of new heights arose, that soared,
or stretched their white uncertain curves in sky like wings traversing
infinity.

It seemed unlike morning to the lovers, but as if night had broken
with a revelation of the kingdom in the heart of night. While the broad
smooth waters rolled unlighted beneath that transfigured upper sphere,
it was possible to think the scene might vanish like a view caught
out of darkness by lightning. Alp over burning Alp, and around them a
hueless dawn! The two exulted they threw off the load of wonderment, and
in looking they had the delicious sensation of flight in their veins.

Renee stole toward Nevil. She was mystically shaken and at his mercy;
and had he said then, 'Over to the other land, away from Venice!' she
would have bent her head.

She asked his permission to rouse her brother and madame, so that they
should not miss the scene.

Roland lay in the folds of his military greatcoat, too completely happy
to be disturbed, Nevil Beauchamp chose to think; and Rosamund Culling,
he told Renee, had been separated from her husband last on these waters.

'Ah! to be unhappy here,' sighed Renee. 'I fancied it when I begged her
to join us. It was in her voice.'

The impressionable girl trembled. He knew he was dear to her, and
for that reason, judging of her by himself, he forbore to urge his
advantage, conceiving it base to fear that loving him she could yield
her hand to another; and it was the critical instant. She was almost in
his grasp. A word of sharp entreaty would have swung her round to see
her situation with his eyes, and detest and shrink from it. He committed
the capital fault of treating her as