The room had the customary aspect of a painter’s studio; one of those delightful spots that hardly seem to belong to the actual world, but rather to be the outward type of a poet’s haunted imagination, where there are glimpses, sketches, and half-developed hints of beings and objects grander and more beautiful than we can anywhere find in reality.  The windows were closed with shutters, or deeply curtained, except one, which was partly open to a sunless portion of the sky, admitting only from high upward that partial light which, with its strongly marked contrast of shadow, is the first requisite towards seeing objects pictorially.  Pencil-drawings were pinned against the wall or scattered on the tables.  Unframed canvases turned their backs on the spectator, presenting only a blank to the eye, and churlishly concealing whatever riches of scenery or human beauty Miriam’s skill had depicted on the other side.

In the obscurest part of the room Donatello was half startled at perceiving duskily a woman with long dark hair, who threw up her arms with a wild gesture of tragic despair, and appeared to beckon him into the darkness along with her.

“Do not be afraid, Donatello,” said Miriam, smiling to see him peering doubtfully into the mysterious dusk.  “She means you no mischief, nor could perpetrate any if she wished it ever so much.  It is a lady of exceedingly pliable disposition; now a heroine of romance, and now a rustic maid; yet all for show; being created, indeed, on purpose to wear rich shawls and other garments in a becoming fashion.  This is the true end of her being, although she pretends to assume the most varied duties and perform many parts in life, while really the poor puppet has nothing on earth to do.  Upon my word, I am satirical unawares, and seem to be describing nine women out of ten in the person of my lay-figure.  For most purposes she has the advantage of the sisterhood.  Would I were like her!”

“How it changes her aspect,” exclaimed Donatello, “to know that she is but a jointed figure!  When my eyes first fell upon her, I thought her arms moved, as if beckoning me to help her in some direful peril.”

“Are you often troubled with such sinister freaks of fancy?” asked Miriam.  “I should not have supposed it.”

“To tell you the truth, dearest signorina,” answered the young Italian, “I am apt to be fearful in old, gloomy houses, and in the dark.  I love no dark or dusky corners, except it be in a grotto, or among the thick green leaves of an arbor, or in some nook of the woods, such as I know many in the neighborhood of my home.  Even there, if a stray sunbeam steal in, the shadow is all the better for its cheerful glimmer.”

“Yes; you are a Faun, you know,” said the fair artist, laughing at the remembrance of the scene of the day before.  “But the world is sadly changed nowadays; grievously changed, poor Donatello, since those happy times when your race used to dwell in the Arcadian woods, playing hide and seek with the nymphs in grottoes and nooks of shrubbery.  You have reappeared on earth some centuries too late.”