Red has been praised for its nobility of the color of life. But the true color of life is not red. Red is the color of violence, or of life broken open, edited, and published. Or if red is indeed the color of life, it is so only on condition that it is not seen. Once fully visible, red is the color of life violated, and in the act of betrayal and of waste.

No mirror keeps its glances.

Let us turn to our own childhoods-no further-if we will renew our sense of remoteness, and of the mystery of change.

... I am dark but fair, / Black but fair.

There is no innocent sleep so innocent as sleep shared between a woman and a child, the little breath hurrying beside the longer, as a child's foot runs.

In the case of women, it is of the living and unpublished blood that the violent world has professed to be delicate and ashamed. See the curious history of the political rights of woman under the Revolution. On the scaffold she enjoyed an ungrudged share in the fortunes of party. Political life might be denied her, but that seems a trifle when you consider how generously she was permitted political death.

Rome in the ages, dimmed with all her towers, / Floats in the mist, a little cloud at tether.