“No, surely, it was not in Hilda,” said Kenyon.  “Her womanhood is of the ethereal type, and incompatible with any shadow of darkness or evil.”

“You are right,” rejoined Miriam; “there are women of that ethereal type, as you term it, and Hilda is one of them.  She would die of her first wrong-doing,—­supposing for a moment that she could be capable of doing wrong.  Of sorrow, slender as she seems, Hilda might bear a great burden; of sin, not a feather’s weight.  Methinks now, were it my doom, I could bear either, or both at once; but my conscience is still as white as Hilda’s.  Do you question it?”

“Heaven forbid, Miriam!” exclaimed the sculptor.

He was startled at the strange turn which she had so suddenly given to the conversation.  Her voice, too,—­so much emotion was stifled rather than expressed in it, sounded unnatural.

“O, my friend,” cried she, with sudden passion, “will you be my friend indeed?  I am lonely, lonely, lonely!  There is a secret in my heart that burns me,—­that tortures me!  Sometimes I fear to go mad of it; sometimes I hope to die of it; but neither of the two happens.  Ah, if I could but whisper it to only one human soul!  And you—­you see far into womanhood; you receive it widely into your large view.  Perhaps—­perhaps, but Heaven only knows, you might understand me!  O, let me speak!”

“Miriam, dear friend,” replied the sculptor, “if I can help you, speak freely, as to a brother.”

“Help me?  No!” said Miriam.

Kenyon’s response had been perfectly frank and kind; and yet the subtlety of Miriam’s emotion detected a certain reserve and alarm in his warmly expressed readiness to hear her story.  In his secret soul, to say the truth, the sculptor doubted whether it were well for this poor, suffering girl to speak what she so yearned to say, or for him to listen.  If there were any active duty of friendship to be performed, then, indeed, he would joyfully have come forward to do his best.  But if it were only a pent-up heart that sought an outlet? in that case it was by no means so certain that a confession would do good.  The more her secret struggled and fought to be told, the more certain would it be to change all former relations that had subsisted between herself and the friend to whom she might reveal it.  Unless he could give her all the sympathy, and just the kind of sympathy that the occasion required, Miriam would hate him by and by, and herself still more, if he let her speak.

This was what Kenyon said to himself; but his reluctance, after all, and whether he were conscious of it or no, resulted from a suspicion that had crept into his heart and lay there in a dark corner.  Obscure as it was, when Miriam looked into his eyes, she detected it at once.

“Ah, I shall hate you!” cried she, echoing the thought which he had not spoken; she was half choked with the gush of passion that was thus turned back upon her.  “You are as cold and pitiless as your own marble.”