ace used to dwell in the Arcadian woods, playing hide
and seek with the nymphs in grottoes and nooks of shrubbery. You have
reappeared on earth some centuries too late."

"I do not understand you now," answered Donatello, looking perplexed;
"only, signorina, I am glad to have my lifetime while you live; and
where you are, be it in cities or fields, I would fain be there too."

"I wonder whether I ought to allow you to speak in this way," said
Miriam, looking thoughtfully at him. "Many young women would think it
behooved them to be offended. Hilda would never let you speak so, I dare
say. But he is a mere boy," she added, aside, "a simple boy, putting his
boyish heart to the proof on the first woman whom he chances to meet.
If yonder lay-figure had had the luck to meet him first, she would have
smitten him as deeply as I."

"Are you angry with me?" asked Donatello dolorously.

"Not in the least," answered Miriam, frankly giving him her hand. "Pray
look over some of these sketches till I have leisure to chat with you
a little. I hardly think I am in spirits enough to begin your portrait
to-day."

Donatello was as gentle and docile as a pet spaniel; as playful, too, in
his general disposition, or saddening with his mistress's variable mood
like that or any other kindly animal which has the faculty of
bestowing its sympathies more completely than men or women can ever do.
Accordingly, as Miriam bade him, he tried to turn his attention to a
great pile and confusion of pen and ink sketches and pencil drawings
which lay tossed together on a table. As it chanced, however, they gave
the poor youth little delight.

The first that he took up was a very impressive sketch, in which the
artist had jotted down her rough ideas for a picture of Jael driving the
nail through the temples of Sisera. It was dashed off with remarkable
power, and showed a touch or two that were actually lifelike and
deathlike, as if Miriam had been standing by when Jael gave the first
stroke of her murderous hammer, or as if she herself were Jael, and felt
irresistibly impelled to make her bloody confession in this guise.

Her first conception of the stern Jewess had evidently been that of
perfect womanhood, a lovely form, and a high, heroic face of lofty
beauty; but, dissatisfied either with her own work or the terrible story
itself, Miriam had added a certain wayward quirk of her pencil, which at
once converted the heroine into a vulgar murderess. It