required, as the condition of their existence, a more summer-like
atmosphere than ours."

"I will not accept your moral!" replied the hopeful and happy-natured
Hilda.

"Then here is another; take your choice!" said the sculptor, remembering
what Miriam had recently suggested, in reference to the same point. "He
perpetrated a great crime; and his remorse, gnawing into his soul,
has awakened it; developing a thousand high capabilities, moral and
intellectual, which we never should have dreamed of asking for, within
the scanty compass of the Donatello whom we knew."

"I know not whether this is so," said Hilda. "But what then?"

"Here comes my perplexity," continued Kenyon. "Sin has educated
Donatello, and elevated him. Is sin, then,--which we deem such a
dreadful blackness in the universe,--is it, like sorrow, merely an
element of human education, through which we struggle to a higher and
purer state than we could otherwise have attained? Did Adam fall, that
we might ultimately rise to a far loftier paradise than his?" "O hush!"
cried Hilda, shrinking from him with an expression of horror which
wounded the poor, speculative sculptor to the soul. "This is terrible;
and I could weep for you, if you indeed believe it. Do not you perceive
what a mockery your creed makes, not only of all religious sentiments,
but of moral law? And how it annuls and obliterates whatever precepts of
Heaven are written deepest within us? You have shocked me beyond words!"

"Forgive me, Hilda!" exclaimed the sculptor, startled by her agitation;
"I never did believe it! But the mind wanders wild and wide; and, so
lonely as I live and work, I have neither pole-star above nor light
of cottage windows here below, to bring me home. Were you my guide, my
counsellor, my inmost friend, with that white wisdom which clothes you
as a celestial garment, all would go well. O Hilda, guide me home!"

"We are both lonely; both far from home!" said Hilda, her eyes filling
with tears. "I am a poor, weak girl, and have no such wisdom as you
fancy in me."

What further may have passed between these lovers, while standing before
the pillared shrine, and the marble Madonna that marks Raphael's tomb;
whither they had now wandered, we are unable to record. But when the
kneeling figure beneath the open eye of the Pantheon arose, she looked
towards the pair and extended her hands with a gesture of benediction.
Then they knew that it was Miriam. They suffered her to