Naturally, it is true, she was the more inclined to melancholy,
yet fully capable of that high frolic of the spirits which richly
compensates for many gloomy hours; if her soul was apt to lurk in the
darkness of a cavern, she could sport madly in the sunshine before
the cavern's mouth. Except the freshest mirth of animal spirits, like
Donatello's, there is no merriment, no wild exhilaration, comparable to
that of melancholy people escaping from the dark region in which it is
their custom to keep themselves imprisoned.

So the shadowy Miriam almost outdid Donatello on his own ground. They
ran races with each other, side by side, with shouts and laughter; they
pelted one another with early flowers, and gathering them up twined
them with green leaves into garlands for both their heads. They played
together like children, or creatures of immortal youth. So much had they
flung aside the sombre habitudes of daily life, that they seemed born
to be sportive forever, and endowed with eternal mirthfulness instead
of any deeper joy. It was a glimpse far backward into Arcadian life, or,
further still, into the Golden Age, before mankind was burdened with
sin and sorrow, and before pleasure had been darkened with those shadows
that bring it into high relief, and make it happiness.

"Hark!" cried Donatello, stopping short, as he was about to bind
Miriam's fair hands with flowers, and lead her along in triumph, "there
is music somewhere in the grove!"

"It is your kinsman, Pan, most likely," said Miriam, "playing on his
pipe. Let us go seek him, and make him puff out his rough cheeks and
pipe his merriest air! Come; the strain of music will guide us onward
like a gayly colored thread of silk."

"Or like a chain of flowers," responded Donatello, drawing her along by
that which he had twined. "This way!--Come!"

CHAPTER X

THE SYLVAN DANCE

As the music came fresher on their ears, they danced to its cadence,
extemporizing new steps and attitudes. Each varying movement had a grace
which might have been worth putting into marble, for the long delight of
days to come, but vanished with the movement that gave it birth, and was
effaced from memory by another. In Miriam's motion, freely as she flung
herself into the frolic of the hour, there was still an artful beauty;
in Donatello's, there was a charm of indescribable grotesqueness hand
in hand with grace; sweet, bewitching, most provocative of laughter,
and yet akin to pa