e the roofs of distant Rome.
Then rose tumultuously into his consciousness that strong love for
Hilda, which it was his habit to confine in one of the heart's inner
chambers, because he had found no encouragement to bring it forward. But
now he felt a strange pull at his heart-strings. It could not have been
more perceptible, if all the way between these battlements and Hilda's
dove-cote had stretched an exquisitely sensitive cord, which, at the
hither end, was knotted with his aforesaid heart-strings, and, at the
remoter one, was grasped by a gentle hand. His breath grew tremulous. He
put his hand to his breast; so distinctly did he seem to feel that cord
drawn once, and again, and again, as if--though still it was bashfully
intimated there were an importunate demand for his presence. O for the
white wings of Hilda's doves, that he might, have flown thither, and
alighted at the Virgin's shrine!

But lovers, and Kenyon knew it well, project so lifelike a copy of
their mistresses out of their own imaginations, that it can pull at
the heartstrings almost as perceptibly as the genuine original. No airy
intimations are to be trusted; no evidences of responsive affection less
positive than whispered and broken words, or tender pressures of the
hand, allowed and half returned; or glances, that distil many passionate
avowals into one gleam of richly colored light. Even these should
be weighed rigorously, at the instant; for, in another instant, the
imagination seizes on them as its property, and stamps them with its
own arbitrary value. But Hilda's maidenly reserve had given her lover no
such tokens, to be interpreted either by his hopes or fears.

"Yonder, over mountain and valley, lies Rome," said the sculptor; "shall
you return thither in the autumn?"

"Never! I hate Rome," answered Donatello; "and have good cause."

"And yet it was a pleasant winter that we spent there," observed
Kenyon, "and with pleasant friends about us. You would meet them again
there--all of them."

"All?" asked Donatello.

"All, to the best of my belief," said the sculptor: "but you need not go
to Rome to seek them. If there were one of those friends whose lifetime
was twisted with your own, I am enough of a fatalist to feel assured
that you will meet that one again, wander whither you may. Neither can
we escape the companions whom Providence assigns for us, by climbing an
old tower like this."

"Yet the stairs are steep and dark," rejoined t