“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 him, which he mistook for such drowsiness as he had known in his innocent past life.  But, by and by, he raised himself slowly and left the garden.  Sometimes poor Donatello started, as if he heard a shriek; sometimes he shrank back, as if a face, fearful to behold, were thrust close to his own.  In this dismal mood, bewildered with the novelty of sin and grief, he had little left of that singular resemblance, on account of which, and for their sport, his three friends had fantastically recognized him as the veritable Faun of Praxiteles.

CHAPTER XXIII

MIRIAM AND HILDA

On leaving the Medici Gardens Miriam felt herself astray in the world; and having no special reason to seek one place more than another, she suffered chance to direct her steps as it would.  Thus it happened, that, involving herself in the crookedness of Rome, she saw Hilda’s tower rising before her, and was put in mind to climb to the young girl’s eyry, and ask why she had broken her engagement at the church of the Capuchins.  People often do