“Here it is, then,” said Miriam, contemplating Hilda’s work with great interest and delight, mixed with the painful sympathy that the picture excited.  “Everywhere we see oil-paintings, crayon sketches, cameos, engravings, lithographs, pretending to be Beatrice, and representing the poor girl with blubbered eyes, a leer of coquetry, a merry look as if she were dancing, a piteous look as if she were beaten, and twenty other modes of fantastic mistake.  But here is Guido’s very Beatrice; she that slept in the dungeon, and awoke, betimes, to ascend the scaffold, And now that you have done it, Hilda, can you interpret what the feeling is, that gives this picture such a mysterious force?  For my part, though deeply sensible of its influence, I cannot seize it.”

“Nor can I, in words,” replied her friend.  “But while I was painting her, I felt all the time as if she were trying to escape from my gaze.  She knows that her sorrow is so strange and so immense, that she ought to be solitary forever, both for the world’s sake and her own; and this is the reason we feel such a distance between Beatrice and ourselves, even when our eyes meet hers.  It is infinitely heart-breaking to meet her glance, and to feel that nothing can be done to help or comfort her; neither does she ask help or comfort, knowing the hopelessness of her case better than we do.  She is a fallen angel,—­fallen, and yet sinless; and it is only this depth of sorrow, with its weight and darkness, that keeps her down upon earth, and brings her within our view even while it sets her beyond our reach.”

“You deem her sinless?” asked Miriam; “that is not so plain to me.  If I can pretend to see at all into that dim region, whence she gazes so strangely and sadly at us, Beatrice’s own conscience does not acquit her of something evil, and never to be forgiven!”

“Sorrow so black as hers oppresses her very nearly as sin would,” said Hilda.

“Then,” inquired Miriam, “do you think that there was no sin in the deed for which she suffered?”

“Ah!” replied Hilda, shuddering, “I really had quite forgotten Beatrice’s history, and was thinking of her only as the picture seems to reveal her character.  Yes, yes; it was terrible guilt, an inexpiable crime, and she feels it to be so.  Therefore it is that the forlorn creature so longs to elude our eyes, and forever vanish away into nothingness!  Her doom is just!”

“O Hilda, your innocence is like a sharp steel sword!” exclaimed her friend.  “Your judgments are often terribly severe, though you seem all made up of gentleness and mercy.  Beatrice’s sin may not have been so great:  perhaps it was no sin at all, but the best virtue possible in the circumstances.  If she viewed it as a sin, it may have been because her nature was too feeble for the fate imposed upon her.  Ah!” continued Miriam passionately, “if I could only get within her consciousness!—­if I could but clasp Beatrice Cenci’s ghost, and draw it into myself!  I would give my life to know whether she thought herself innocent, or the one great criminal since time began.”