to let fall upon a woman's heart, when she loves you, and
is conscious of having caused your misery! If you love me, Donatello,
speak it not again. And surely you did love me?"

"I did," replied Donatello gloomily and absently.

Miriam released the young man's hand, but suffered one of her own to
lie close to his, and waited a moment to see whether he would make
any effort to retain it. There was much depending upon that simple
experiment.

With a deep sigh--as when, sometimes, a slumberer turns over in a
troubled dream Donatello changed his position, and clasped both his
hands over his forehead. The genial warmth of a Roman April kindling
into May was in the atmosphere around them; but when Miriam saw
that involuntary movement and heard that sigh of relief (for so she
interpreted it), a shiver ran through her frame, as if the iciest wind
of the Apennines were blowing over her.

"He has done himself a greater wrong than I dreamed of," thought she,
with unutterable compassion. "Alas! it was a sad mistake! He might
have had a kind of bliss in the consequences of this deed, had he been
impelled to it by a love vital enough to survive the frenzy of that
terrible moment, mighty enough to make its own law, and justify itself
against the natural remorse. But to have perpetrated a dreadful murder
(and such was his crime, unless love, annihilating moral distinctions,
made it otherwise) on no better warrant than a boy's idle fantasy! I
pity him from the very depths of my soul! As for myself, I am past my
own or other's pity."

She arose from the young man's side, and stood before him with a sad,
commiserating aspect; it was the look of a ruined soul, bewailing,
in him, a grief less than what her profounder sympathies imposed upon
herself.

"Donatello, we must part," she said, with melancholy firmness. "Yes;
leave me! Go back to your old tower, which overlooks the green valley
you have told me of among the Apennines. Then, all that has passed will
be recognized as but an ugly dream. For in dreams the conscience sleeps,
and we often stain ourselves with guilt of which we should be incapable
in our waking moments. The deed you seemed to do, last night, was
no more than such a dream; there was as little substance in what you
fancied yourself doing. Go; and forget it all!"

"Ah, that terrible face!" said Donatello, pressing his hands over his
eyes. "Do you call that unreal?"

"Yes; for you beheld it with dreaming eyes," rep