“Oh, no,” said Aaron.
“Throw it in the river, Aaron,” said Lilly.
Aaron turned and looked at him.
“Throw it in the river,” repeated Lilly. “It's an end.”
Aaron nervelessly dropped the flute into the stream. The two men stood leaning on the bridge-parapet, as if unable to move.
“We shall have to go home,” said Lilly. “Tanny may hear of it and be anxious.”
Aaron was quite dumbfounded by the night's event: the loss of his flute. Here was a blow he had not expected. And the loss was for him symbolistic. It chimed with something in his soul: the bomb, the smashed flute, the end.
“There goes Aaron's Rod, then,” he said to Lilly.
“It'll grow again. It's a reed, a water-plant—you can't kill it,” said Lilly, unheeding.
“And me?”