Tournabuoni Lilly turned towards the Arno, and soon they were on the Ponte Santa Trinità.
"Who threw the bomb?" said Aaron.
"I suppose an anarchist."
"It's all the same," said Aaron.
The two men, as if unable to walk any further, leaned on the broad parapet of the bridge and looked at the water in the darkness of the still, deserted night. Aaron still had his flute section in his hand, his overcoat over his arm.
"Is that your flute?" asked Lilly.
"Bit of it. Smashed."
"Let me look."
He looked, and gave it back.
"No good," he said.
"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?"
"You'll have to live without a rod, meanwhile."
To which pleasant remark Aaron made no reply.
