Rose, Blanche, and Violet, Volume III by George Henry Lewes

While the wretched girl wandered distractedly on her way, goaded by the pangs of shame and remorse, the still more wretched Cecil, calm in his concentrated despair, was walking along the river side, pursued by the Eumenides, eager to reach a quiet spot where he might end his blighted existence.

The snow fell in large flakes that cold January night; and as each flake sank gently on the quiet bosom of the river, and silently disappeared in it, leaving no other trace than the smallest possible circle, it seemed to him an image of his own disappearance from this stormy, sunless world. In the deep, quiet bosom of Eternity was he about to vanish: from this scene of turmoil and disgrace, he was to drop into the swiftly flowing river of Eternity, in it to be absorbed like to those flakes of snow. There was comfort in that thought.