He had not gone far when the peasant and the contadina met him.  They were still hand in hand, and appeared to be straying through the grotesque and animated scene, taking as little part in it as himself.  It might be because he recognized them, and knew their solemn secret, that the sculptor fancied a melancholy emotion to be expressed by the very movement and attitudes of these two figures; and even the grasp of their hands, uniting them so closely, seemed to set them in a sad remoteness from the world at which they gazed.

“I rejoice to meet you,” said Kenyon.  But they looked at him through the eye-holes of their black masks, without answering a word.

“Pray give me a little light on the matter which I have so much at heart,” said he; “if you know anything of Hilda, for Heaven’s sake, speak!”

Still they were silent; and the sculptor began to imagine that he must have mistaken the identity of these figures, there being such a multitude in similar costume.  Yet there was no other Donatello, no other Miriam.  He felt, too, that spiritual certainty which impresses us with the presence of our friends, apart from any testimony of the senses.

“You are unkind,” resumed he,—­“knowing the anxiety which oppresses me, —­not to relieve it, if in your power.”

The reproach evidently had its effect; for the contadina now spoke, and it was Miriam’s voice.

“We gave you all the light we could,” said she.  “You are yourself unkind, though you little think how much so, to come between us at this hour.  There may be a sacred hour, even in carnival time.”

In another state of mind, Kenyon could have been amused by the impulsiveness of this response, and a sort of vivacity that he had often noted in Miriam’s conversation.  But he was conscious of a profound sadness in her tone, overpowering its momentary irritation, and assuring him that a pale, tear-stained face was hidden behind her mask.

“Forgive me!” said he.

Donatello here extended his hand,—­not that which was clasping Miriam’s,—­and she, too, put her free one into the sculptor’s left; so that they were a linked circle of three, with many reminiscences and forebodings flashing through their hearts.  Kenyon knew intuitively that these once familiar friends were parting with him now.

“Farewell!” they all three said, in the same breath.

No sooner was the word spoken, than they loosed their hands; and the uproar of the Carnival swept like a tempestuous sea over the spot which they had included within their small circle of isolated feeling.