“There is but one right hand on earth that could have supplied the model,” answered Miriam; “so small and slender, so perfectly symmetrical, and yet with a character of delicate energy.  I have watched it a hundred times at its work; but I did not dream that you had won Hilda so far!  How have you persuaded that shy maiden to let you take her hand in marble?”

“Never!  She never knew it!” hastily replied Kenyon, anxious to vindicate his mistress’s maidenly reserve.  “I stole it from her.  The hand is a reminiscence.  After gazing at it so often, and even holding it once for an instant, when Hilda was not thinking of me, I should be a bungler indeed, if I could not now reproduce it to something like the life.”

“May you win the original one day!” said Miriam kindly.

“I have little ground to hope it,” answered the sculptor despondingly; “Hilda does not dwell in our mortal atmosphere; and gentle and soft as she appears, it will be as difficult to win her heart as to entice down a white bird from its sunny freedom in the sky.  It is strange, with all her delicacy and fragility, the impression she makes of being utterly sufficient to herself.  No; I shall never win her.  She is abundantly capable of sympathy, and delights to receive it, but she has no need of love.”

“I partly agree with you,” said Miriam.  “It is a mistaken idea, which men generally entertain, that nature has made women especially prone to throw their whole being into what is technically called love.  We have, to say the least, no more necessity for it than yourselves; only we have nothing else to do with our hearts.  When women have other objects in life, they are not apt to fall in love.  I can think of many women distinguished in art, literature, and science,—­and multitudes whose hearts and minds find good employment in less ostentatious ways,—­who lead high, lonely lives, and are conscious of no sacrifice so far as your sex is concerned.”

“And Hilda will be one of these!” said Kenyon sadly; “the thought makes me shiver for myself, and and for her, too.”

“Well,” said Miriam, smiling, “perhaps she may sprain the delicate wrist which you have sculptured to such perfection.  In that case you may hope.  These old masters to whom she has vowed herself, and whom her slender hand and woman’s heart serve so faithfully, are your only rivals.”

The sculptor sighed as he put away the treasure of Hilda’s marble hand into the ivory coffer, and thought how slight was the possibility that he should ever feel responsive to his own the tender clasp of the original.  He dared not even kiss the image that he himself had made:  it had assumed its share of Hilda’s remote and shy divinity.

“And now,” said Miriam, “show me the new statue which you asked me hither to see.”

CHAPTER XIV

CLEOPATRA