passion, the object of which
intellectually seemed far beneath her.

"How have you obtained the certainty of which you speak?" asked he,
after a pause.

"O, by a sure token," said Miriam; "a gesture, merely; a shudder, a cold
shiver, that ran through him one sunny morning when his hand happened to
touch mine! But it was enough."

"I firmly believe, Miriam," said the sculptor, "that he loves you
still."

She started, and a flush of color came tremulously over the paleness of
her cheek.

"Yes," repeated Kenyon, "if my interest in Donatello--and in yourself,
Miriam--endows me with any true insight, he not only loves you still,
but with a force and depth proportioned to the stronger grasp of his
faculties, in their new development."

"Do not deceive me," said Miriam, growing pale again.

"Not for the world!" replied Kenyon. "Here is what I take to be
the truth. There was an interval, no doubt, when the horror of some
calamity, which I need not shape out in my conjectures, threw Donatello
into a stupor of misery. Connected with the first shock there was an
intolerable pain and shuddering repugnance attaching themselves to
all the circumstances and surroundings of the event that so terribly
affected him. Was his dearest friend involved within the horror of that
moment? He would shrink from her as he shrank most of all from himself.
But as his mind roused itself,--as it rose to a higher life than he had
hitherto experienced,--whatever had been true and permanent within him
revived by the selfsame impulse. So has it been with his love."

"But, surely," said Miriam, "he knows that I am here! Why, then, except
that I am odious to him, does he not bid me welcome?"

"He is, I believe, aware of your presence here," answered the sculptor.
"Your song, a night or two ago, must have revealed it to him, and, in
truth, I had fancied that there was already a consciousness of it in
his mind. But, the more passionately he longs for your society, the more
religiously he deems himself bound to avoid it. The idea of a lifelong
penance has taken strong possession of Donatello. He gropes blindly
about him for some method of sharp self-torture, and finds, of course,
no other so efficacious as this."

"But he loves me," repeated Miriam, in a low voice, to herself. "Yes; he
loves me!"

It was strange to observe the womanly softness that came over her,
as she admitted that comfort into her bosom. The cold, unnatural
indifference of he