“I knew it,” said Miriam, mournfully, and with no resentment.  “What remains of my finer nature would have told me so, even if it had not been perceptible in all your manner.  Well, my dear friend, when you go back to Rome, tell Hilda what her severity has done!  She was all womanhood to me; and when she cast me off, I had no longer any terms to keep with the reserves and decorums of my sex.  Hilda has set me free!  Pray tell her so, from Miriam, and thank her!”

“I shall tell Hilda nothing that will give her pain,” answered Kenyon.  “But, Miriam, though I know not what passed between her and yourself, I feel,—­and let the noble frankness of your disposition forgive me if I say so,—­I feel that she was right.  You have a thousand admirable qualities.  Whatever mass of evil may have fallen into your life, —­pardon me, but your own words suggest it,—­you are still as capable as ever of many high and heroic virtues.  But the white shining purity of Hilda’s nature is a thing apart; and she is bound, by the undefiled material of which God moulded her, to keep that severity which I, as well as you, have recognized.”

“O, you are right!” said Miriam; “I never questioned it; though, as I told you, when she cast me off, it severed some few remaining bonds between me and decorous womanhood.  But were there anything to forgive, I do forgive her.  May you win her virgin heart; for methinks there can be few men in this evil world who are not more unworthy of her than yourself.”

CHAPTER XXXII

SCENES BY THE WAY

When it came to the point of quitting the reposeful life of Monte Beni, the sculptor was not without regrets, and would willingly have dreamed a little longer of the sweet paradise on earth that Hilda’s presence there might make.  Nevertheless, amid all its repose, he had begun to be sensible of a restless melancholy, to which the cultivators of the ideal arts are more liable than sturdier men.  On his own part, therefore, and leaving Donatello out of the case, he would have judged it well to go.  He made parting visits to the legendary dell, and to other delightful spots with which he had grown familiar; he climbed the tower again, and saw a sunset and a moonrise over the great valley; he drank, on the eve of his departure, one flask, and then another, of the Monte Beni Sunshine, and stored up its flavor in his memory as the standard of what is exquisite in wine.  These things accomplished, Kenyon was ready for the journey.

Donatello had not very easily been stirred out of the peculiar sluggishness, which enthralls and bewitches melancholy people.  He had offered merely a passive resistance, however, not an active one, to his friend’s schemes; and when the appointed hour came, he yielded to the impulse which Kenyon failed not to apply; and was started upon the journey before he had made up his mind to undertake it.  They wandered forth