“That is a droll idea, much droller than his being a Faun!” said Hilda, laughing in her turn.  “This does not quite satisfy me, however, especially as you yourself recognized and acknowledged his wonderful resemblance to the statue.”

“Except as regards the pointed ears,” said Kenyon; adding, aside, “and one other little peculiarity, generally observable in the statues of fauns.”

“As for his Excellency the Count di Monte Beni’s ears,” replied Hilda, smiling again at the dignity with which this title invested their playful friend, “you know we could never see their shape, on account of his clustering curls.  Nay, I remember, he once started back, as shyly as a wild deer, when Miriam made a pretence of examining them.  How do you explain that?”

“O, I certainly shall not contend against such a weight of evidence, the fact of his faunship being otherwise so probable,” answered the sculptor, still hardly retaining his gravity.  “Faun or not, Donatello or the Count di Monte Beni—­is a singularly wild creature, and, as I have remarked on other occasions, though very gentle, does not love to be touched.  Speaking in no harsh sense, there is a great deal of animal nature in him, as if he had been born in the woods, and had run wild all his childhood, and were as yet but imperfectly domesticated.  Life, even in our day, is very simple and unsophisticated in some of the shaggy nooks of the Apennines.”

“It annoys me very much,” said Hilda, “this inclination, which most people have, to explain away the wonder and the mystery out of everything.  Why could not you allow me—­and yourself, too—­the satisfaction of thinking him a Faun?”

“Pray keep your belief, dear Hilda, if it makes you any happier,” said the sculptor; “and I shall do my best to become a convert.  Donatello has asked me to spend the summer with him, in his ancestral tower, where I purpose investigating the pedigree of these sylvan counts, his forefathers; and if their shadows beckon me into dreamland, I shall willingly follow.  By the bye, speaking of Donatello, there is a point on which I should like to be enlightened.”

“Can I help you, then?” said Hilda, in answer to his look.

“Is there the slightest chance of his winning Miriam’s affections?” suggested Kenyon.

“Miriam! she, so accomplished and gifted!” exclaimed Hilda; “and he, a rude, uncultivated boy!  No, no, no!”

“It would seem impossible,” said the sculptor.  “But, on the other hand, a gifted woman flings away her affections so unaccountably, sometimes!  Miriam of late has been very morbid and miserable, as we both know.  Young as she is, the morning light seems already to have faded out of her life; and now comes Donatello, with natural sunshine enough for himself and her, and offers her the opportunity of making her heart and life all new and cheery again.  People of high intellectual endowments do not require similar ones in those they love.  They are just the persons to appreciate the wholesome gush of natural feeling, the honest affection, the simple joy, the fulness of contentment with what he loves, which Miriam sees in Donatello.  True; she may call him a simpleton.  It is a necessity of the case; for a man loses the capacity for this kind of affection, in proportion as he cultivates and refines himself.”