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.