“My sweet friend,” she said, taking one of his passive hands in both of hers, “what can I say to comfort you?”

“Nothing!” replied Donatello, with sombre reserve.  “Nothing will ever comfort me.”

“I accept my own misery,” continued Miriam, “my own guilt, if guilt it be; and, whether guilt or misery, I shall know how to deal with it.  But you, dearest friend, that were the rarest creature in all this world, and seemed a being to whom sorrow could not cling,—­you, whom I half fancied to belong to a race that had vanished forever, you only surviving, to show mankind how genial and how joyous life used to be, in some long-gone age,—­what had you to do with grief or crime?”

“They came to me as to other men,” said Donatello broodingly.  “Doubtless I was born to them.”

“No, no; they came with me,” replied Miriam.  “Mine is the responsibility!  Alas! wherefore was I born?  Why did we ever meet?  Why did I not drive you from me, knowing for my heart foreboded it—­that the cloud in which I walked would likewise envelop you!”

Donatello stirred uneasily, with the irritable impatience that is often combined With a mood of leaden despondency.  A brown lizard with two tails—­a monster often engendered by the Roman sunshine—­ran across his foot, and made him start.  Then he sat silent awhile, and so did Miriam, trying to dissolve her whole heart into sympathy, and lavish it all upon him, were it only for a moment’s cordial.

The young man lifted his hand to his breast, and, unintentionally, as Miriam’s hand was within his, he lifted that along with it.  “I have a great weight here!” said he.  The fancy struck Miriam (but she drove it resolutely down) that Donatello almost imperceptibly shuddered, while, in pressing his own hand against his heart, he pressed hers there too.

“Rest your heart on me, dearest one!” she resumed.  “Let me bear all its weight; I am well able to bear it; for I am a woman, and I love you!  I love you, Donatello!  Is there no comfort for you in this avowal?  Look at me!  Heretofore you have found me pleasant to your sight.  Gaze into my eyes!  Gaze into my soul!  Search as deeply as you may, you can never see half the tenderness and devotion that I henceforth cherish for you.  All that I ask is your acceptance of the utter self-sacrifice (but it shall be no sacrifice, to my great love) with which I seek to remedy the evil you have incurred for my sake!”

All this fervor on Miriam’s part; on Donatello’s, a heavy silence.

“O, speak to me!” she exclaimed.  “Only promise me to be, by and by, a little happy!”

“Happy?” murmured Donatello.  “Ah, never again! never again!”

“Never?  Ah, that is a terrible word to say to me!” answered Miriam.  “A terrible word to let fall upon a woman’s heart, when she loves you, and is conscious of having caused your misery!  If you love me, Donatello, speak it not again.  And surely you did love me?”