iod of the
day, a throng of passers-by and loiterers choked up the narrow sidewalk.
A penitent was thus brought in contact with the sculptor.

It was a figure in a white robe, with a kind of featureless mask
over the face, through the apertures of which the eyes threw an
unintelligible light. Such odd, questionable shapes are often seen
gliding through the streets of Italian cities, and are understood to be
usually persons of rank, who quit their palaces, their gayeties, their
pomp and pride, and assume the penitential garb for a season, with a
view of thus expiating some crime, or atoning for the aggregate of petty
sins that make up a worldly life. It is their custom to ask alms, and
perhaps to measure the duration of their penance by the time requisite
to accumulate a sum of money out of the little droppings of individual
charity. The avails are devoted to some beneficent or religious purpose;
so that the benefit accruing to their own souls is, in a manner, linked
with a good done, or intended, to their fellow-men. These figures have
a ghastly and startling effect, not so much from any very impressive
peculiarity in the garb, as from the mystery which they bear about with
them, and the sense that there is an acknowledged sinfulness as the
nucleus of it.

In the present instance, however, the penitent asked no alms of Kenyon;
although, for the space of a minute or two, they stood face to face, the
hollow eyes of the mask encountering the sculptor's gaze. But, just as
the crowd was about to separate them, the former spoke, in a voice not
unfamiliar to Kenyon, though rendered remote and strange by the guilty
veil through which it penetrated.

"Is all well with you, Signore?" inquired the penitent, out of the cloud
in which he walked.

"All is well," answered Kenyon. "And with you?"

But the masked penitent returned no answer, being borne away by the
pressure of the throng.

The sculptor stood watching the figure, and was almost of a mind to
hurry after him and follow up the conversation that had been begun; but
it occurred to him that there is a sanctity (or, as we might rather term
it, an inviolable etiquette) which prohibits the recognition of persons
who choose to walk under the veil of penitence.

"How strange!" thought Kenyon to himself. "It was surely Donatello! What
can bring him to Rome, where his recollections must be so painful, and
his presence not without peril? And Miriam! Can she have accompanied
h