The City of Delight

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.