She proceeded with her story.  The great influence of her family connections had shielded her from some of the consequences of her imputed guilt.  But, in her despair, she had fled from home, and had surrounded her flight with such circumstances as rendered it the most probable conclusion that she had committed suicide.  Miriam, however, was not of the feeble nature which takes advantage of that obvious and poor resource in earthly difficulties.  She flung herself upon the world, and speedily created a new sphere, in which Hilda’s gentle purity, the sculptor’s sensibility, clear thought, and genius, and Donatello’s genial simplicity had given her almost her first experience of happiness.  Then came that ill-omened adventure of the catacomb, The spectral figure which she encountered there was the evil fate that had haunted her through life.

Looking back upon what had happened, Miriam observed, she now considered him a madman.  Insanity must have been mixed up with his original composition, and developed by those very acts of depravity which it suggested, and still more intensified, by the remorse that ultimately followed them.  Nothing was stranger in his dark career than the penitence which often seemed to go hand in hand with crime.  Since his death she had ascertained that it finally led him to a convent, where his severe and self-inflicted penance had even acquired him the reputation of unusual sanctity, and had been the cause of his enjoying greater freedom than is commonly allowed to monks.

“Need I tell you more?” asked Miriam, after proceeding thus far.  “It is still a dim and dreary mystery, a gloomy twilight into which I guide you; but possibly you may catch a glimpse of much that I myself can explain only by conjecture.  At all events, you can comprehend what my situation must have been, after that fatal interview in the catacomb.  My persecutor had gone thither for penance, but followed me forth with fresh impulses to crime.  He had me in his power.  Mad as he was, and wicked as he was, with one word he could have blasted me in the belief of all the world.  In your belief too, and Hilda’s!  Even Donatello would have shrunk from me with horror!”

“Never,” said Donatello, “my instinct would have known you innocent.”

“Hilda and Donatello and myself,—­we three would have acquitted you,” said Kenyon, “let the world say what it might.  Ah, Miriam, you should have told us this sad story sooner!”

“I thought often of revealing it to you,” answered Miriam; “on one occasion, especially,—­it was after you had shown me your Cleopatra; it seemed to leap out of my heart, and got as far as my very lips.  But finding you cold to accept my confidence, I thrust it back again.  Had I obeyed my first impulse, all would have turned out differently.”

“And Hilda!” resumed the sculptor.  “What can have been her connection with these dark incidents?”

“She will, doubtless, tell you with her own lips,” replied Miriam.  “Through sources of information which I possess in Rome, I can assure you of her safety.  In two days more—­by the help of the special Providence that, as I love to tell you, watches over Hilda—­she shall rejoin you.”