plunging after it."

After Kenyon had closed the door, she went wearily down the staircase,
but paused midway, as if debating with herself whether to return.

"The mischief was done," thought she; "and I might as well have had the
solace that ought to come with it. I have lost,--by staggering a little
way beyond the mark, in the blindness of my distress, I have lost, as
we shall hereafter find, the genuine friendship of this clear-minded,
honorable, true-hearted young man, and all for nothing. What if I should
go back this moment and compel him to listen?"

She ascended two or three of the stairs, but again paused, murmured to
herself, and shook her head.

"No, no, no," she thought; "and I wonder how I ever came to dream of
it. Unless I had his heart for my own,--and that is Hilda's, nor would I
steal it from her,--it should never be the treasure Place of my secret.
It is no precious pearl, as I just now told him; but my dark-red
carbuncle--red as blood--is too rich a gem to put into a stranger's
casket."

She went down the stairs, and found her shadow waiting for her in the
street.

CHAPTER XV

AN AESTHETIC COMPANY

On the evening after Miriam's visit to Kenyon's studio, there was an
assemblage composed almost entirely of Anglo-Saxons, and chiefly of
American artists, with a sprinkling of their English brethren; and some
few of the tourists who still lingered in Rome, now that Holy Week was
past. Miriam, Hilda, and the sculptor were all three present, and with
them Donatello, whose life was so far turned from fits natural bent
that, like a pet spaniel, he followed his beloved mistress wherever he
could gain admittance.

The place of meeting was in the palatial, but somewhat faded and gloomy
apartment of an eminent member of the aesthetic body. It was no more
formal an occasion than one of those weekly receptions, common among
the foreign residents of Rome, at which pleasant people--or disagreeable
ones, as the case may be--encounter one another with little ceremony.

If anywise interested in art, a man must be difficult to please who
cannot find fit companionship among a crowd of persons, whose ideas and
pursuits all tend towards the general purpose of enlarging the world's
stock of beautiful productions.

One of the chief causes that make Rome the favorite residence of
artists--their ideal home which they sigh for in advance, and are so
loath to migrate from, after once breathing its enchante