lied Miriam. "It was
unreal; and, that you may feel it so, it is requisite that you see this
face of mine no more. Once, you may have thought it beautiful; now, it
has lost its charm. Yet it would still retain a miserable potency' to
bring back the past illusion, and, in its train, the remorse and anguish
that would darken all your life. Leave me, therefore, and forget me."

"Forget you, Miriam!" said Donatello, roused somewhat from his apathy of
despair.

"If I could remember you, and behold you, apart from that frightful
visage which stares at me over your shoulder, that were a consolation,
at least, if not a joy."

"But since that visage haunts you along with mine," rejoined Miriam,
glancing behind her, "we needs must part. Farewell, then! But if
ever--in distress, peril, shame, poverty, or whatever anguish is most
poignant, whatever burden heaviest--you should require a life to be
given wholly, only to make your own a little easier, then summon me! As
the case now stands between us, you have bought me dear, and find me of
little worth. Fling me away, therefore! May you never need me more! But,
if otherwise, a wish--almost an unuttered wish will bring me to you!"

She stood a moment, expecting a reply. But Donatello's eyes had again
fallen on the ground, and he had not, in his bewildered mind and
overburdened heart, a word to respond.

"That hour I speak of may never come," said Miriam. "So
farewell--farewell forever."

"Farewell," said Donatello.

His voice hardly made its way through the environment of unaccustomed
thoughts and emotions which had settled over him like a dense and dark
cloud. Not improbably, he beheld Miriam through so dim a medium that she
looked visionary; heard her speak only in a thin, faint echo.

She turned from the young man, and, much as her heart yearned towards
him, she would not profane that heavy parting by an embrace, or even a
pressure of the hand. So soon after the semblance of such mighty love,
and after it had been the impulse to so terrible a deed, they parted,
in all outward show, as coldly as people part whose whole mutual
intercourse has been encircled within a single hour.

And Donatello, when Miriam had departed, stretched himself at full
length on the stone bench, and drew his hat over his eyes, as the idle
and light-hearted youths of dreamy Italy are accustomed to do, when they
lie down in the first convenient shade, and snatch a noonday slumber.
A stupor was upon