began to recognize the impossibility of getting nearer to Miriam, and
gruffly acquiesced.

There were two persons, however, whom she appeared to acknowledge as
friends in the closer and truer sense of the word; and both of these
more favored individuals did credit to Miriam's selection. One was
a young American sculptor, of high promise and rapidly increasing
celebrity; the other, a girl of the same country, a painter like Miriam
herself, but in a widely different sphere of art. Her heart flowed out
towards these two; she requited herself by their society and friendship
(and especially by Hilda's) for all the loneliness with which, as
regarded the rest of the world, she chose to be surrounded. Her two
friends were conscious of the strong, yearning grasp which Miriam laid
upon them, and gave her their affection in full measure; Hilda, indeed,
responding with the fervency of a girl's first friendship, and Kenyon
with a manly regard, in which there was nothing akin to what is
distinctively called love.

A sort of intimacy subsequently grew up between these three friends
and a fourth individual; it was a young Italian, who, casually visiting
Rome, had been attracted by the beauty which Miriam possessed in a
remarkable degree. He had sought her, followed her, and insisted, with
simple perseverance, upon being admitted at least to her acquaintance; a
boon which had been granted, when a more artful character, seeking it by
a more subtle mode of pursuit, would probably have failed to obtain it.
This young man, though anything but intellectually brilliant, had many
agreeable characteristics which won him the kindly and half-contemptuous
regard of Miriam and her two friends. It was he whom they called
Donatello, and whose wonderful resemblance to the Faun of Praxiteles
forms the keynote of our narrative.

Such was the position in which we find Miriam some few months after her
establishment at Rome. It must be added, however, that the world did not
permit her to hide her antecedents without making her the subject of
a good deal of conjecture; as was natural enough, considering the
abundance of her personal charms, and the degree of notice that she
attracted as an artist. There were many stories about Miriam's origin
and previous life, some of which had a very probable air, while others
were evidently wild and romantic fables. We cite a few, leaving the
reader to designate them either under the probable or the romantic head.

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