ulptor, in great emotion. "Hilda has
never allowed me to manifest more than a friendly regard; but, at least,
she cannot prevent my watching over her at a humble distance. I will set
out this very hour."

"Do not leave us now!" whispered Miriam imploringly, and laying her hand
on his arm. "One moment more! Ah; he has no word for me!"

"Miriam!" said Donatello.

Though but a single word, and the first that he had spoken, its tone was
a warrant of the sad and tender depth from which it came. It told Miriam
things of infinite importance, and, first of all, that he still loved
her. The sense of their mutual crime had stunned, but not destroyed, the
vitality of his affection; it was therefore indestructible. That tone,
too, bespoke an altered and deepened character; it told of a vivified
intellect, and of spiritual instruction that had come through sorrow and
remorse; so that instead of the wild boy, the thing of sportive,
animal nature, the sylvan Faun, here was now the man of feeling and
intelligence.

She turned towards him, while his voice still reverberated in the depths
of her soul.

"You have called me!" said she.

"Because my deepest heart has need of you!" he replied. "Forgive,
Miriam, the coldness, the hardness with which I parted from you! I was
bewildered with strange horror and gloom."

"Alas! and it was I that brought it on you," said she. "What repentance,
what self-sacrifice, can atone for that infinite wrong? There was
something so sacred in the innocent and joyous life which you were
leading! A happy person is such an unaccustomed and holy creature in
this sad world! And, encountering so rare a being, and gifted with the
power of sympathy with his sunny life, it was my doom, mine, to bring
him within the limits of sinful, sorrowful mortality! Bid me depart,
Donatello! Fling me off! No good, through my agency, can follow upon
such a mighty evil!"

"Miriam," said he, "our lot lies together. Is it not so? Tell me, in
Heaven's name, if it be otherwise."

Donatello's conscience was evidently perplexed with doubt, whether the
communion of a crime, such as they two were jointly stained with, ought
not to stifle all the instinctive motions of their hearts, impelling
them one towards the other. Miriam, on the other hand, remorsefully
questioned with herself whether the misery, already accruing from
her influence, should not warn her to withdraw from his path. In this
momentous interview, therefore, two s