Yet all these vineyard scenes, and the processes connected with the culture of the grape, had a flavor of poetry about them.  The toil that produces those kindly gifts of nature which are not the substance of life, but its luxury, is unlike other toil.  We are inclined to fancy that it does not bend the sturdy frame and stiffen the overwrought muscles, like the labor that is devoted in sad, hard earnest to raise grain for sour bread.  Certainly, the sunburnt young men and dark-cheeked, laughing girls, who weeded the rich acres of Monte Beni, might well enough have passed for inhabitants of an unsophisticated Arcadia.  Later in the season, when the true vintage time should come, and the wine of Sunshine gush into the vats, it was hardly too wild a dream that Bacchus himself might revisit the haunts which he loved of old.  But, alas! where now would he find the Faun with whom we see him consorting in so many an antique group?

Donatello’s remorseful anguish saddened this primitive and delightful life.  Kenyon had a pain of his own, moreover, although not all a pain, in the never quiet, never satisfied yearning of his heart towards Hilda.  He was authorized to use little freedom towards that shy maiden, even in his visions; so that he almost reproached himself when sometimes his imagination pictured in detail the sweet years that they might spend together, in a retreat like this.  It had just that rarest quality of remoteness from the actual and ordinary world B a remoteness through which all delights might visit them freely, sifted from all troubles—­which lovers so reasonably insist upon, in their ideal arrangements for a happy union.  It is possible, indeed, that even Donatello’s grief and Kenyon’s pale, sunless affection lent a charm to Monte Beni, which it would not have retained amid a more abundant joyousness.  The sculptor strayed amid its vineyards and orchards, its dells and tangled shrubberies, with somewhat the sensations of an adventurer who should find his way to the site of ancient Eden, and behold its loveliness through the transparency of that gloom which has been brooding over those haunts of innocence ever since the fall.  Adam saw it in a brighter sunshine, but never knew the shade of Pensive beauty which Eden won from his expulsion.

It was in the decline of the afternoon that Kenyon returned from his long, musing ramble, Old Tomaso—­between whom and himself for some time past there had been a mysterious understanding,—­met him in the entrance hall, and drew him a little aside.

“The signorina would speak with you,” he whispered.

“In the chapel?” asked the sculptor.

“No; in the saloon beyond it,” answered the butler:  “the entrance you once saw the signorina appear through it is near the altar, hidden behind the tapestry.”

Kenyon lost no time in obeying the summons.

CHAPTER XXXI

THE MARBLE SALOON