'Isn't it lovely?' says Grace, in a low voice. 'Come here, under the willows, where the shadows are deep, and look down!'
'How dark and silent it is!' says Tom.
'Silent, but never still. I don't know how it is,' says Grace, with a little sigh, 'but flowing water always makes me feel tired.'
'It is the constant movement. I have felt that too. But sit down, darling. Don't look at it——'
She interrupts him a little impatiently. 'No; you don't understand. It is not that weariness; it is of the mind. I think of life; how it is going on, always, always. No rest, not for a single moment; dying, being born, loving, hating, thinking, fighting, suffering, sinning. It is terrible.'
'But it is beautiful too, Grace.'
'It may be, or perhaps indifferent. To one here and there; one like the river that receives but cannot give.'
'What do you mean, Grace?'
'I don't know that I quite know myself,' she says, wearily. 'But look at the river. It is very old, isn't it? I imagine how, when it began to flow, the big primeval world, with its forests and monsters, was about it—ages upon ages—and then came men and their inventions—huts and houses, and castles, and palaces, and cities, rising and falling as the river flows on, the old, old river. And sometimes I think of the dead it has hidden, of the tragedies it has seen, of the miseries it has stilled. And it is always the same; smiling in the sunlight, sleeping in the shadow, making pictures of the trees and flowers on its banks. Could one hope to like that?'
'But we do not see what the river does, Grace.'