“I have never been able,” said Miriam, “to admire this picture nearly so much as Hilda does, in its moral and intellectual aspect.  If it cost her more trouble to be good, if her soul were less white and pure, she would be a more competent critic of this picture, and would estimate it not half so high.  I see its defects today more clearly than ever before.”

“What are some of them?” asked Kenyon.

“That Archangel, now,” Miriam continued; “how fair he looks, with his unruffled wings, with his unhacked sword, and clad in his bright armor, and that exquisitely fitting sky-blue tunic, cut in the latest Paradisiacal mode!  What a dainty air of the first celestial society!  With what half-scornful delicacy he sets his prettily sandalled foot on the head of his prostrate foe!  But, is it thus that virtue looks the moment after its death struggle with evil?  No, no; I could have told Guido better.  A full third of the Archangel’s feathers should have been torn from his wings; the rest all ruffled, till they looked like Satan’s own!  His sword should be streaming with blood, and perhaps broken halfway to the hilt; his armor crushed, his robes rent, his breast gory; a bleeding gash on his brow, cutting right across the stern scowl of battle!  He should press his foot hard down upon the old serpent, as if his very soul depended upon it, feeling him squirm mightily, and doubting whether the fight were half over yet, and how the victory might turn!  And, with all this fierceness, this grimness, this unutterable horror, there should still be something high, tender, and holy in Michael’s eyes, and around his mouth.  But the battle never was such a child’s play as Guido’s dapper Archangel seems to have found it.”

“For Heaven’s sake, Miriam,” cried Kenyon, astonished at the wild energy of her talk; “paint the picture of man’s struggle against sin according to your own idea!  I think it will be a masterpiece.”

“The picture would have its share of truth, I assure you,” she answered; “but I am sadly afraid the victory would fail on the wrong side.  Just fancy a smoke-blackened, fiery-eyed demon bestriding that nice young angel, clutching his white throat with one of his hinder claws; and giving a triumphant whisk of his scaly tail, with a poisonous dart at the end of it!  That is what they risk, poor souls, who do battle with Michael’s enemy.”

It now, perhaps, struck Miriam that her mental disquietude was impelling her to an undue vivacity; for she paused, and turned away from the picture, without saying a word more about it.  All this while, moreover, Donatello had been very ill at ease, casting awe-stricken and inquiring glances at the dead monk; as if he could look nowhere but at that ghastly object, merely because it shocked him.  Death has probably a peculiar horror and ugliness, when forced upon the contemplation of a person so naturally joyous as Donatello, who lived with completeness in the present moment, and was able to form but vague images of the future.