And then below, how it spread, and writhed, and whirled into transparent fans, hissing and twining snakes, polished glass-wreaths, huge crystal bells, which boiled up from the bottom, and dived again beneath long threads of creamy foam, and swung round posts and roots, and rushed blackening under dark weed-fringed boughs, and gnawed at the marly banks, and shook the ever-restless bulrushes, till it was swept away and down over the white pebbles and olive weeds, in one broad rippling sheet of molten silver, towards the distant sea.

Downwards it fleeted ever, and bore his thoughts floating on its oily stream; and the great trout, with their yellow sides and peacock backs, lounged among the eddies, and the silver grayling dimpled and wandered upon the shallows, and the may-flies flickered and rustled round him like water fairies, with their green gauzy wings; the coot clanked musically among the reeds; the frogs hummed their ceaseless vesper-monotone; the kingfisher darted from his hole in the bank like a blue spark of electric light; the swallows' bills snapped as they twined and hawked above the pool; the swift's wings whirred like musket-balls, as they rushed screaming past his head; and ever the river fleeted by, bearing his eyes away down the current, till its wild eddies began to glow with crimson beneath the setting sun.

The complex harmony of sights and sounds slid softly over his soul, and he sank away into a still daydream, too passive for imagination, too deep for meditation, and 'Beauty born of murmuring sound, Did pass into his face.' Blame him not.

There are more things in a man's heart than ever get in through his thoughts.
On a sudden, a soft voice behind him startled him.
'Can a poor cockney artist venture himself along this timber without falling in ?' Lancelot turned.
'Come out to me, and if you stumble, the naiads will rise out of their depths, and "hold up their pearled wrists" to save their favourite.' The artist walked timidly out along the beams, and sat down beside Lancelot, who shook him warmly by the hand.
'Welcome, Claude Mellot, and all lovely enthusiasms and symbolisms! Expound to me, now, the meaning of that water-lily leaf and its grand simple curve, as it lies sleeping there in the back eddy.' 'Oh, I am too amused to philosophise.

The fair Argemone has just been treating me to her three hundred and sixty-fifth philippic against my unoffending beard.' 'Why, what fault can she find with such a graceful and natural ornament ?' 'Just this, my dear fellow, that it is natural.