There was hardly an appreciable interval between the time of the
desertion of her artists and the thunder of assault at her door, but
in that space there passed before Amaryllis that useless retrospect
which is death's recapitulation of the life it means to take. And out
of that long procession, she singled one conviction which made the
step of the Roman on her threshold welcome. It was an old, old moral,
so old that it had never had weight with her, who believed it was time
to reconstruct the whole artistic attitude of the world.
And that was why she waited impatiently at her doorway for death,
which was a kinder thing than life.