Donatello made no answer, but sat awhile, appearing to follow with his eyes one of the figures, which was repeated many times over in the groups upon the walls and ceiling.  It formed the principal link of an allegory, by which (as is often the case in such pictorial designs) the whole series of frescos were bound together, but which it would be impossible, or, at least, very wearisome, to unravel.  The sculptor’s eyes took a similar direction, and soon began to trace through the vicissitudes,—­once gay, now sombre,—­in which the old artist had involved it, the same individual figure.  He fancied a resemblance in it to Donatello himself; and it put him in mind of one of the purposes with which he had come to Monte Beni.

“My dear Count,” said he, “I have a proposal to make.  You must let me employ a little of my leisure in modelling your bust.  You remember what a striking resemblance we all of us—­Hilda, Miriam, and I—­found between your features and those of the Faun of Praxiteles.  Then, it seemed an identity; but now that I know your face better, the likeness is far less apparent.  Your head in marble would be a treasure to me.  Shall I have it?”

“I have a weakness which I fear I cannot overcome,” replied the Count, turning away his face.  “It troubles me to be looked at steadfastly.”

“I have observed it since we have been sitting here, though never before,” rejoined the sculptor.  “It is a kind of nervousness, I apprehend, which, you caught in the Roman air, and which grows upon you, in your solitary life.  It need be no hindrance to my taking your bust; for I will catch the likeness and expression by side glimpses, which (if portrait painters and bust makers did but know it) always bring home richer results than a broad stare.”

“You may take me if you have the power,” said Donatello; but, even as he spoke, he turned away his face; “and if you can see what makes me shrink from you, you are welcome to put it in the bust.  It is not my will, but my necessity, to avoid men’s eyes.  Only,” he added, with a smile which made Kenyon doubt whether he might not as well copy the Faun as model a new bust,—­“only, you know, you must not insist on my uncovering these ears of mine!”

“Nay; I never should dream of such a thing,” answered the sculptor, laughing, as the young Count shook his clustering curls.  “I could not hope to persuade you, remembering how Miriam once failed!”

Nothing is more unaccountable than the spell that often lurks in a spoken word.  A thought may be present to the mind, so distinctly that no utterance could make it more so; and two minds may be conscious of the same thought, in which one or both take the profoundest interest; but as long as it remains unspoken, their familiar talk flows quietly over the hidden idea, as a rivulet may sparkle and dimple over something sunken in its bed.  But speak the word, and it is like bringing up a drowned body out of the deepest pool of the rivulet, which has been aware of the horrible secret all along, in spite of its smiling surface.