h he and I were
wedded--was it a blessing, in that strange disguise? Was it a means of
education, bringing a simple and imperfect nature to a point of feeling
and intelligence which it could have reached under no other discipline?"

"You stir up deep and perilous matter, Miriam," replied Kenyon. "I dare
not follow you into the unfathomable abysses whither you are tending."

"Yet there is a pleasure in them! I delight to brood on the verge of
this great mystery," returned she. "The story of the fall of man! Is it
not repeated in our romance of Monte Beni? And may we follow the analogy
yet further? Was that very sin,--into which Adam precipitated himself
and all his race, was it the destined means by which, over a long
pathway of toil and sorrow, we are to attain a higher, brighter, and
profounder happiness, than our lost birthright gave? Will not this idea
account for the permitted existence of sin, as no other theory can?"

"It is too dangerous, Miriam! I cannot follow you!" repeated the
sculptor. "Mortal man has no right to tread on the ground where you now
set your feet."

"Ask Hilda what she thinks of it," said Miriam, with a thoughtful smile.
"At least, she might conclude that sin--which man chose instead of
good--has been so beneficently handled by omniscience and omnipotence,
that, whereas our dark enemy sought to destroy us by it, it has really
become an instrument most effective in the education of intellect and
soul."

Miriam paused a little longer among these meditations, which the
sculptor rightly felt to be so perilous; she then pressed his hand, in
token of farewell.

"The day after to-morrow," said she, "an hour before sunset, go to the
Corso, and stand in front of the fifth house on your left, beyond the
Antonine column. You will learn tidings of a friend."

Kenyon would have besought her for more definite intelligence, but she
shook her head, put her finger on her lips, and turned away with an
illusive smile. The fancy impressed him that she too, like Donatello,
had reached a wayside paradise, in their mysterious life journey, where
they both threw down the burden of the before and after, and, except for
this interview with himself, were happy in the flitting moment. To-day
Donatello was the sylvan Faun; to-day Miriam was his fit companion,
a Nymph of grove or fountain; to-morrow--a remorseful man and woman,
linked by a marriage bond of crime--they would set forth towards an
inevitable goal.