“It is carnival time, you know,” said Miriam, as if in explanation of Donatello’s and her own costume.  “Do you remember how merrily we spent the Carnival, last year?”

“It seems many years ago,” replied Kenyon.  “We are all so changed!”

When individuals approach one another with deep purposes on both sides, they seldom come at once to the matter which they have most at heart.  They dread the electric shock of a too sudden contact with it.  A natural impulse leads them to steal gradually onward, hiding themselves, as it were, behind a closer, and still a closer topic, until they stand face to face with the true point of interest.  Miriam was conscious of this impulse, and partially obeyed it.

“So your instincts as a sculptor have brought you into the presence of our newly discovered statue,” she observed.  “Is it not beautiful?  A far truer image of immortal womanhood than the poor little damsel at Florence, world famous though she be.”

“Most beautiful,” said Kenyon, casting an indifferent glance at the Venus.  “The time has been when the sight of this statue would have been enough to make the day memorable.”

“And will it not do so now?” Miriam asked.

“I fancied so, indeed, when we discovered it two days ago.  It is Donatello’s prize.  We were sitting here together, planning an interview with you, when his keen eyes detected the fallen goddess, almost entirely buried under that heap of earth, which the clumsy excavators showered down upon her, I suppose.  We congratulated ourselves, chiefly for your sake.  The eyes of us three are the only ones to which she has yet revealed herself.  Does it not frighten you a little, like the apparition of a lovely woman that livid of old, and has long lain in the grave?”

“Ah, Miriam!  I cannot respond to you,” said the sculptor, with irrepressible impatience.  “Imagination and the love of art have both died out of me.”

“Miriam,” interposed Donatello with gentle gravity, “why should we keep our friend in suspense?  We know what anxiety he feels.  Let us give him what intelligence we can.”

“You are so direct and immediate, my beloved friend!” answered Miriam with an unquiet smile.  “There are several reasons why I should like to play round this matter a little while, and cover it with fanciful thoughts, as we strew a grave with flowers.”

“A grave!” exclaimed the sculptor.

“No grave in which your heart need be buried,” she replied; “you have no such calamity to dread.  But I linger and hesitate, because every word I speak brings me nearer to a crisis from which I shrink.  Ah, Donatello! let us live a little longer the life of these last few days!  It is so bright, so airy, so childlike, so without either past or future!  Here, on the wild Campagna, you seem to have found, both for yourself and me, the life that belonged to you in early youth; the sweet irresponsible life which you inherited from your mythic ancestry, the Fauns of Monte Beni.  Our stern and black reality will come upon us speedily enough.  But, first, a brief time more of this strange happiness.”