The City of Delight

A moment later, the Maccabee dashed into the andronitis of Amaryllis.

After him sprang a terrified servant crying: "The Roman! The Roman is upon us!"

A roar of such magnitude that it penetrated the stone walls of

Amaryllis' house, swept in after the servant. Quaking menials began to

pour into the hall. Among them came the blue-eyed girl, the athlete

and Juventius the Swan. These three joined their mistress who stood

under a hanging lamp. Into the passage from the court, left open by

the frightened servants, swept the prolonged outcry of perishing

Jerusalem. Over it all thundered the boom of the siege-engines shaking

the earth.

The slaves slipped down upon their knees and began to groan together.

The silver coins on the lamp began to swing; the brass cyanthus which

Amaryllis had recently drained of her last drink of wine moved

gradually to the edge of the pedestal upon which she had placed it.

The dual nature of the uproar was now distinct; organized warfare and

popular disaster at the same time. The Roman was sweeping up the

ancient ravine. Jerusalem had fallen.

The gradual crescendo now attained deafening proportions; the hanging

lamp increased its swing; the silver coins began to strike together

with keen and exquisitely fine music. Juventius the Swan, with his dim

eyes filled with horror, was looking at them. The peculiar desperate

indifference of the wholly hopeless seized him. His long white hands

began to move with the motion of the lamp; the music of the meeting

coins became regular; he caught the note, and mounting, with a bound,

the rostrum that had been his Olympus all his life, began to sing. The

melody of his glorious voice struggled only a moment for supremacy

with the uproar of imminent death and then his increasing exaltation

gave him triumph. The great hall shook with the magnificent power of

his only song!

The Maccabee confronted Amaryllis, with fierce question in his eyes.

She pointed calmly at the heavy white curtain pulled to one side and

caught on a bracket. The brass wicket over the black mouth of the

tunnel was wide.

Without a word, the Maccabee plunged into it and was swallowed up.

Amaryllis looked after him.

"And no farewell?" she said.

The thunder of assault began at her door. Juventius sang it down. The

athlete and the girl crept toward the mouth of the black passage,

wavered a moment and plunged in. After them tumbled a confusion of

artists and servants who were swallowed up, and the hall was filled

only with music.

The woman by the lectern and the singer on the rostrum had chosen. To

live without beauty and to live without love were not possible to the

one who had known beauty all his life, to the one who had learned love

so late--after she had been beggared of her dowry of purity.