“It is too dangerous, Miriam!  I cannot follow you!” repeated the sculptor.  “Mortal man has no right to tread on the ground where you now set your feet.”

“Ask Hilda what she thinks of it,” said Miriam, with a thoughtful smile.  “At least, she might conclude that sin—­which man chose instead of good—­has been so beneficently handled by omniscience and omnipotence, that, whereas our dark enemy sought to destroy us by it, it has really become an instrument most effective in the education of intellect and soul.”

Miriam paused a little longer among these meditations, which the sculptor rightly felt to be so perilous; she then pressed his hand, in token of farewell.

“The day after to-morrow,” said she, “an hour before sunset, go to the Corso, and stand in front of the fifth house on your left, beyond the Antonine column.  You will learn tidings of a friend.”

Kenyon would have besought her for more definite intelligence, but she shook her head, put her finger on her lips, and turned away with an illusive smile.  The fancy impressed him that she too, like Donatello, had reached a wayside paradise, in their mysterious life journey, where they both threw down the burden of the before and after, and, except for this interview with himself, were happy in the flitting moment.  To-day Donatello was the sylvan Faun; to-day Miriam was his fit companion, a Nymph of grove or fountain; to-morrow—­a remorseful man and woman, linked by a marriage bond of crime—­they would set forth towards an inevitable goal.

CHAPTER XLVIII

A SCENE IN THE CORSO

On the appointed afternoon, Kenyon failed not to make his appearance in the Corso, and at an hour much earlier than Miriam had named.

It was carnival time.  The merriment of this famous festival was in full progress; and the stately avenue of the Corso was peopled with hundreds of fantastic shapes, some of which probably represented the mirth of ancient times, surviving through all manner of calamity, ever since the days of the Roman Empire.  For a few afternoons of early spring, this mouldy gayety strays into the sunshine; all the remainder of the year, it seems to be shut up in the catacombs or some other sepulchral storehouse of the past.

Besides these hereditary forms, at which a hundred generations have laughed, there were others of modern date, the humorous effluence of the day that was now passing.  It is a day, however, and an age, that appears to be remarkably barren, when compared with the prolific originality of former times, in productions of a scenic and ceremonial character, whether grave or gay.  To own the truth, the Carnival is alive, this present year, only because it has existed through centuries gone by.  It is traditionary, not actual.  If decrepit and melancholy Rome smiles, and laughs broadly, indeed, at carnival time, it is not in the old simplicity of real mirth, but with a half-conscious