has long lain in the
grave?"

"Ah, Miriam! I cannot respond to you," said the sculptor, with
irrepressible impatience. "Imagination and the love of art have both
died out of me."

"Miriam," interposed Donatello with gentle gravity, "why should we keep
our friend in suspense? We know what anxiety he feels. Let us give him
what intelligence we can."

"You are so direct and immediate, my beloved friend!" answered Miriam
with an unquiet smile. "There are several reasons why I should like
to play round this matter a little while, and cover it with fanciful
thoughts, as we strew a grave with flowers."

"A grave!" exclaimed the sculptor.

"No grave in which your heart need be buried," she replied; "you have no
such calamity to dread. But I linger and hesitate, because every word I
speak brings me nearer to a crisis from which I shrink. Ah, Donatello!
let us live a little longer the life of these last few days! It is so
bright, so airy, so childlike, so without either past or future! Here,
on the wild Campagna, you seem to have found, both for yourself and me,
the life that belonged to you in early youth; the sweet irresponsible
life which you inherited from your mythic ancestry, the Fauns of Monte
Beni. Our stern and black reality will come upon us speedily enough.
But, first, a brief time more of this strange happiness."

"I dare not linger upon it," answered Donatello, with an expression
that reminded the sculptor of the gloomiest days of his remorse at Monte
Beni. "I dare to be so happy as you have seen me, only because I have
felt the time to be so brief."

"One day, then!" pleaded Miriam. "One more day in the wild freedom of
this sweet-scented air."

"Well, one more day," said Donatello, smiling; and his smile touched
Kenyon with a pathos beyond words, there being gayety and sadness both
melted into it; "but here is Hilda's friend, and our own. Comfort him,
at least, and set his heart at rest, since you have it partly in your
power."

"Ah, surely he might endure his pangs a little longer!" cried Miriam,
turning to Kenyon with a tricksy, fitful kind of mirth, that served to
hide some solemn necessity, too sad and serious to be looked at in its
naked aspect. "You love us both, I think, and will be content to suffer
for our sakes, one other day. Do I ask too much?"

"Tell me of Hilda," replied the sculptor; "tell me only that she is
safe, and keep back what else you will."

"Hilda is safe," said Miriam. "There