The whole world had faded and darkened to a uniform tint, black and dingy. The woman who stood there could hardly say whether this tint were brown or grey, for there was no colour to contrast it with, nothing but her own black dress seen through the same sordid medium. In front of her, rather lighter in tint, she could see a few inches of parapet, on which her hands were lying, and dimly could  discern the ground at her feet. If she leant over the parapet she could not see the water, but where she believed it to be, something like the shadow of a ripple moved across the dusk.
And as for want of contrast she could determine no colour, so for want of distance she could determine no size. All she saw could be enclosed by four small walls; all she could not see might reveal miles of river-bank, streets of stately houses. It was not the Infinite but the Indetermined that she looked upon. Noises had sunk into a hoarse murmur and swell, dulled as by this thick, heavy medium. No such monotony of existence could be conceived; a world of shadows, an Isle of Voices,  would be life itself to this. And yet she believed herself to be standing in the heart of the greatest city in the world, but a few paces removed from streets where men and women were moving up and down; where her face was turned across the water stood (she believed) a great house, a town garden where wood-pigeons built, and where she had seen lilies of the valley flower, saying softly to herself:—
“Here in dust and dirt, oh here,
The lilies of His love appear.”
How was it possible that in so short a time such a change should fall, such a swallowing up of life as the centuries cannot bring to the cities of the south? Truly she was living by faith in a blank  world of existence. A foot or two of parapet each side of her hands; a foot or two of gravel each side of her feet—beyond that limit nothingness. Yet by faith she would move in this void.
She turned to the left and walked along the path which appeared step by step as she paced, until in front of her the shadow of a building fell upon the fog: cornerwise it rose, fading into mist, and likewise vanished a few feet above her head.
Yet she believed that this was a great tower; she believed that the building stretched away from her, and that at that moment............