Under Ben's hand beautiful Diana ran southward, cutting away the miles with a timeless whisper at her bow; but during the night the wind fell off, the air growing dull, silent, and in the morning dead. The sun rose on sails become slack, bemused in idleness on a mirror sea.
"I wondered, in fact, that she had not long ago destroyed herself in one of those seizures."
"They seldom do, Reuben, though often they injure themselves. She is nearly forty, that woman we saw today—I've known her bite her tongue and bruise herself, but nothing worse. As a rule they die somewhat young. It's as well you saw her so—the condition is not too rare and you'll encounter it again."
"And the books?"
"Have nothing to offer but speculation and bad advice. Nothing I've tried ever had the slightest effect.... What's that?—I mean the one that called from back there in the pasture."
"Red-winged blackbird."
"I wish I knew 'em all, the way you do."
"Brought up with 'em in the wilderness, Amadeus. But nobody could know them all.... Do the books tell anything of the cause?"
"Nothing worth your notice. Speculation, most of it not based on clinical observation. And (as you suggest) without at least some knowledge of immediate causes, treatment's only a blind groping. We must try it of course, because sometimes a guess is correct. But somehow we must also push back along the chain of causes—widen the area of light—somehow.... As you may or may not know, there are many going about in the world far madder than that poor epileptic, who is not really mad at all but merely drops into her fit from time to time, and usually comes out of it unharmed. A fearful thing to watch, Ru—I dare say you still feel it in your stomach. But some of the forms of madness that don't so loudly announce themselves are much worse."