All the winters would beat upon her, all the summers would burn her; but never more would the glad water pour plashing from her dusty urn! never more would the birds make showers with their beating wings in her cool basin! The dead leaves would keep falling year after year to their rest, but she could not fall, must, through the slow ages, stand, until storm and sunshine had wasted her atom by atom away.
On the broad rim of the basin they sat down.

Cosmo turned towards the naiad, such thoughts as I have written throbbing in his brain like the electric light in an exhausted receiver, Joan with her back to the figure, and her eyes on the ground, thinking Cosmo brooded vexed on his newly discovered position.

It was a sad picture.

The two were as the type of Nature and Art, the married pair, here at strife--still together, but only the more apart--Oberon and Titania, with ruin all about them.

Through the straggling branches appeared the tottering dial of Time where not a sun-ray could reach it; for Time himself may well go to sleep where progress is but disintegration.