Beneath there was a deep drop of the windless, scentless darkness that night brings to modern cities; then a narrow trench of unlit gardens obscured by the threadbare texture of leafless tree-tops, then a broad luminous channel of roadway, lined with trees whose natural substance was so changed by the unnatural light that they looked like toy trees made of some brittle composition, and traversed by tramcars glowing orange and twanging white sparks from invisible wires with their invisible arms; at its further edge a long procession of lights stood with a certain pomp along a dark margin, beyond which were black flowing waters.  To the left, from behind tall cliffs of masonry pierced with innumerable windows that were not lit, yet gleamed like the eyes of a blind dog, there jutted out the last spans of a bridge, set thickly with large lights whose images bobbed on the current beneath like vast yellow water-flowers.  On another bridge to the right a train was casting down on the stream a redness that was fire rather than light.  On the opposite bank of the river, at the base of black towers, barges softly dark like melancholy lay on the different harsher darkness of the water, and showed, so sparsely that they looked the richer, a few ruby and emerald lights.  Above, stars crackled frostily, close to earth, as stars do in winter.

“That is the river,” said Mrs. Yaverland.

She said it as if she desired to be out of this warmth, standing over there by the dark parapet marked by the line of lamps close to the flowing waters; as if she would have liked all the beautiful bright lights to be extinguished, so that there would be nothing left but the dark waters.

Ellen went and sat down on the bed.  There was a standard lamp beside it, whose light, curbed to a small rosy cloud by a silken shade like a fairy’s frock, seemed much the best thing for her eyes in the room.  She was sad that in this new life in England, which had seemed so promising, one still had to turn for comfort from persons to things.  She was aware that wildness such as this, such preferences for walking abroad in the chill night rather than sitting in warm rooms, for sterile swift water rather than the solid earth that bears the crops and supports the cities, are the processes of poetry working in the soul.  But it did not please her in an older woman.  She felt that Mrs. Melville, who would have been trotting about crying out at the magnificence of the room, would have been behaving not only more conveniently, but more decently, than this woman who was now crossing the room and not bringing peace with her.  Her open coat slipped backwards on her shoulders so that it stood out on each side like a cloak worn by a romantic actor striding across the stage to the play’s climax.  The ultimate meaning of her expression could be no other than insolence, for it gave sign of some preoccupation so strong that the only force which could hold her back from speaking of it could be contempt for her hearer.  Her face was shadowed with a suggestion of strong feeling, which was as unsuitable on cheeks so worn as paint would have been.