The door of the little courtyard had swung upon its hinges, and partly closed itself.  Hilda (whose native gentleness pervaded all her movements) was quietly opening it, when she was startled, midway, by the noise of a struggle within, beginning and ending all in one breathless instant.  Along with it, or closely succeeding it, was a loud, fearful cry, which quivered upward through the air, and sank quivering downward to the earth.  Then, a silence!  Poor Hilda had looked into the court-yard, and saw the whole quick passage of a deed, which took but that little time to grave itself in the eternal adamant.

CHAPTER XIX

THE FAUN’S TRANSFORMATION

The door of the courtyard swung slowly, and closed itself of its own accord.  Miriam and Donatello were now alone there.  She clasped her hands, and looked wildly at the young man, whose form seemed to have dilated, and whose eyes blazed with the fierce energy that had suddenly inspired him.  It had kindled him into a man; it had developed within him an intelligence which was no native characteristic of the Donatello whom we have heretofore known.  But that simple and joyous creature was gone forever.

“What have you done?” said Miriam, in a horror-stricken whisper.

The glow of rage was still lurid on Donatello’s face, and now flashed out again from his eyes.

“I did what ought to be done to a traitor!” he replied.  “I did what your eyes bade me do, when I asked them with mine, as I held the wretch over the precipice!”

These last words struck Miriam like a bullet.  Could it be so?  Had her eyes provoked or assented to this deed?  She had not known it.  But, alas! looking back into the frenzy and turmoil of the scene just acted, she could not deny—­she was not sure whether it might be so, or no—­that a wild joy had flamed up in her heart, when she beheld her persecutor in his mortal peril.  Was it horror?—­or ecstasy? or both in one?  Be the emotion what it might, it had blazed up more madly, when Donatello flung his victim off the cliff, and more and more, while his shriek went quivering downward.  With the dead thump upon the stones below had come an unutterable horror.

“And my eyes bade you do it!” repeated she.

They both leaned over the parapet, and gazed downward as earnestly as if some inestimable treasure had fallen over, and were yet recoverable.  On the pavement below was a dark mass, lying in a heap, with little or nothing human in its appearance, except that the hands were stretched out, as if they might have clutched for a moment at the small square stones.  But there was no motion in them now.  Miriam watched the heap of mortality while she could count a hundred, which she took pains to do.  No stir; not a finger moved!

“You have killed him, Donatello!  He is quite dead!” said she.  “Stone dead!  Would I were so, too!”