ts hard substance by the
glow of feeling and intelligence. As the skilful workman gave stroke
after stroke of the chisel with apparent carelessness, but sure effect,
it was impossible not to think that the outer marble was merely an
extraneous environment; the human countenance within its embrace must
have existed there since the limestone ledges of Carrara were first
made. Another bust was nearly completed, though still one of Kenyon's
most trustworthy assistants was at work, giving delicate touches,
shaving off an impalpable something, and leaving little heaps of marble
dust to attest it.

"As these busts in the block of marble," thought Miriam, "so does our
individual fate exist in the limestone of time. We fancy that we carve
it out; but its ultimate shape is prior to all our action."

Kenyon was in the inner room, but, hearing a step in the antechamber, he
threw a veil over what he was at work upon, and came out to receive his
visitor. He was dressed in a gray blouse, with a little cap on the top
of his head; a costume which became him better than the formal garments
which he wore whenever he passed out of his own domains. The sculptor
had a face which, when time had done a little more for it, would offer a
worthy subject for as good an artist as himself: features finely cut, as
if already marble; an ideal forehead, deeply set eyes, and a mouth much
hidden in a light-brown beard, but apparently sensitive and delicate.

"I will not offer you my hand," said he; "it is grimy with Cleopatra's
clay."

"No; I will not touch clay; it is earthy and human," answered Miriam.
"I have come to try whether there is any calm and coolness among
your marbles. My own art is too nervous, too passionate, too full of
agitation, for me to work at it whole days together, without intervals
of repose. So, what have you to show me?"

"Pray look at everything here," said Kenyon. "I love to have painters
see my work. Their judgment is unprejudiced, and more valuable than that
of the world generally, from the light which their own art throws on
mine. More valuable, too, than that of my brother sculptors, who never
judge me fairly,--nor I them, perhaps."

To gratify him, Miriam looked round at the specimens in marble or
plaster, of which there were several in the room, comprising originals
or casts of most of the designs that Kenyon had thus far produced. He
was still too young to have accumulated a large gallery of such things.
What he