nvincible
repugnance,--that Miriam hardly knew him. His lips were drawn apart so
as to disclose his set teeth, thus giving him a look of animal rage,
which we seldom see except in persons of the simplest and rudest
natures. A shudder seemed to pass through his very bones.

"I hate him!" muttered he.

"Be satisfied; I hate him too!" said Miriam.

She had no thought of making this avowal, but was irresistibly drawn to
it by the sympathy of the dark emotion in her own breast with that so
strongly expressed by Donatello. Two drops of water or of blood do not
more naturally flow into each other than did her hatred into his.

"Shall I clutch him by the throat?" whispered Donatello, with a savage
scowl. "Bid me do so, and we are rid of him forever."

"In Heaven's name, no violence!" exclaimed Miriam, affrighted out of the
scornful control which she had hitherto held over her companion, by
the fierceness that he so suddenly developed. "O, have pity on
me, Donatello, if for nothing else, yet because in the midst of my
wretchedness I let myself be your playmate for this one wild
hour! Follow me no farther. Henceforth leave me to my doom. Dear
friend,--kind, simple, loving friend,--make me not more wretched by the
remembrance of having thrown fierce hates or loves into the wellspring
of your happy life!"

"Not follow you!" repeated Donatello, soothed from anger into sorrow,
less by the purport of what she said, than by the melancholy sweetness
of her voice,--"not follow you! What other path have I?"

"We will talk of it once again," said Miriam still soothingly;
"soon--to-morrow when you will; only leave me now."

CHAPTER XI

FRAGMENTARY SENTENCES

In the Borghese Grove, so recently uproarious with merriment and music,
there remained only Miriam and her strange follower.

A solitude had suddenly spread itself around them. It perhaps symbolized
a peculiar character in the relation of these two, insulating them, and
building up an insuperable barrier between their life-streams and other
currents, which might seem to flow in close vicinity. For it is one of
the chief earthly incommodities of some species of misfortune, or of a
great crime, that it makes the actor in the one, or the sufferer of
the other, an alien in the world, by interposing a wholly unsympathetic
medium betwixt himself and those whom he yearns to meet.

Owing, it may be, to this moral estrangement,--this chill remoteness of
their position,--