"Yes, it is the decadence, the Roman decadence over again. Were Lucian to come among us now he would be quite at ease--no, not that, for in one thing we are utterly changed; so sordid is our decadence, so gross, so contemptibly material, that we are denied the consolations of art vouchsafed to his own land. Even in the days of her death Rome could boast the splendour of a luxuriant literature, the glory of beauty of environment, the supremacy of an art-appreciation that blinded men's eyes to the shadow of the end. But for us, in the meanness of our fall, we have no rags of art wherewith to cover our nakedness. Wagner is dead, and Turner and Rossetti; Burne-Jones and Watts will go soon, and Pater will follow Newman and Arnold. The night is at hand." He lifted a small hammer and struck a velvet-voiced bell that stood on the Arabian table of cedar inlaid with nacre and ivory. Murad came out of the darkness, and at a gesture from Aurelian filled the great hookah of jade and amber with the tobacco mingled with honey and opium and cinnamon, placed a bright coal in the cup, and gave the curling stem wound with gold thread to his master. Malcolm watched it all as in a midsummer dream; for once he was succumbing to the subtle influences that were seducing his yielding senses. He could not reply to Aurelian, he lacked now even the desire. The slow and musical voice, so delicately cadenced, had grown infinitely pleasing to his unfamiliar ears, strangely fascinating in its mellow charm. Wondering, he found himself yielding to it,--at first defiantly, then sulkily, then with careless enjoyment, forgetful of everything save his new delight in his strange surroundings. The rose-water gurgled and sobbed in the jade hookah; thin lines of odorous smoke rose sinuously to the silken awning that hung above the terrace, dead in the hot August night. For a time neither spoke; then at length Aurelian said, with a more sorrowful gravity than before,-- "Yes, the night is at hand, and the darkness at last will cover our shame. It is better so. I thought once that through art we might work revolution, and so win the world to clearness of sight again; that was because I did not know the nature of art. Art is a result, not an accident,--a result of conditions that no longer exist. We might as well work for the restoration of chivalry, of the House of Stuart, of the spirit of the Cinque-Cento, or any other equally desirable yet hopeless thing. What we are, that our art is also. Every school of art, every lecture on æsthetics, every art museum, is a waste and a vanity, their influence is nothing. Art can never happen again; we who love it and know it for what it is, the flowering of life, may only dream in the past, building for ourselves a stately pleasure-house in Xanadu on the banks of that river measureless to man that runs to a sunless sea. "Individualism begot materialism, and materialism begot realism; and realism is the antithesis of art.