new the Prince
Barberini would be deaf to all entreaties; so I had no resource but
to sit down before the picture, day after day, and let it sink into my
heart. I do believe it is now photographed there. It is a sad face to
keep so close to one's heart; only what is so very beautiful can never
be quite a pain. Well; after studying it in this way, I know not how
many times, I came home, and have done my best to transfer the image to
canvas."

"Here it is, then," said Miriam, contemplating Hilda's work with great
interest and delight, mixed with the painful sympathy that the picture
excited. "Everywhere we see oil-paintings, crayon sketches, cameos,
engravings, lithographs, pretending to be Beatrice, and representing the
poor girl with blubbered eyes, a leer of coquetry, a merry look as if
she were dancing, a piteous look as if she were beaten, and twenty other
modes of fantastic mistake. But here is Guido's very Beatrice; she that
slept in the dungeon, and awoke, betimes, to ascend the scaffold, And
now that you have done it, Hilda, can you interpret what the feeling
is, that gives this picture such a mysterious force? For my part, though
deeply sensible of its influence, I cannot seize it."

"Nor can I, in words," replied her friend. "But while I was painting
her, I felt all the time as if she were trying to escape from my gaze.
She knows that her sorrow is so strange and so immense, that she ought
to be solitary forever, both for the world's sake and her own; and this
is the reason we feel such a distance between Beatrice and ourselves,
even when our eyes meet hers. It is infinitely heart-breaking to meet
her glance, and to feel that nothing can be done to help or comfort her;
neither does she ask help or comfort, knowing the hopelessness of her
case better than we do. She is a fallen angel,--fallen, and yet sinless;
and it is only this depth of sorrow, with its weight and darkness, that
keeps her down upon earth, and brings her within our view even while it
sets her beyond our reach."

"You deem her sinless?" asked Miriam; "that is not so plain to me. If
I can pretend to see at all into that dim region, whence she gazes so
strangely and sadly at us, Beatrice's own conscience does not acquit her
of something evil, and never to be forgiven!"

"Sorrow so black as hers oppresses her very nearly as sin would," said
Hilda.

"Then," inquired Miriam, "do you think that there was no sin in the deed
for which she suffered