Memoirs of Anne C.L. Botta,: written by her friends. With selections from her correspondence and from her writings in prose and poetry.

anne C. Z. L otta
it temporarily aside, she refused with what was almost vehemence, and betrayed a nervous exaltation.
"This work is something I have," she exclaimed,
"which cannot be taken away. Friends departwe have no friends, but only befriending circumstances drawing one to another until change dissolves
adhesion. Old age comes on, and the common life
shrinks away from us; but art is an enchanted
country where I can always lose myself. We cannot be exacting of humanity, but of art we may demand everything."
The last meeting came unknown, as it comes so
often, mercifully. We walked together on Broadway,
and at parting I drew her back upon a door-step to
rally her upon an abstraction which continued to
disquiet me. "Since coming here," I said, " I have
not really come near you. You are living in a far
country. No report from you of its climate, or of its
conditions. You have eloped with art, your work
under your arm. When will you come back from
that distant land to live among mortals again?" Her
eyes deepened as she pressed my hands. "Never,
perhaps," she murmured, and dropped into the
living stream. I watched the slight, active figure
with its vivaious movement, borne onward in the
crowd, and, as I watched, she slipped away from
me-away into the hereafter. On the following
Wednesday I kept my engagement to pass the
morning with her-but it was at her funeral. That
"Never, perhaps," was the last word of a friendship to me unique.
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