He pointed to a bust of Donatello.  It was not the one which Kenyon had begun to model at Monte Beni, but a reminiscence of the Count’s face, wrought under the influence of all the sculptor’s knowledge of his history, and of his personal and hereditary character.  It stood on a wooden pedestal, not nearly finished, but with fine white dust and small chips of marble scattered about it, and itself incrusted all round with the white, shapeless substance of the block.  In the midst appeared the features, lacking sharpness, and very much resembling a fossil countenance,—­but we have already used this simile, in reference to Cleopatra, with the accumulations of long-past ages clinging to it.

And yet, strange to say, the face had an expression, and a more recognizable one than Kenyon had succeeded in putting into the clay model at Monte Beni.  The reader is probably acquainted with Thorwaldsen’s three-fold analogy,—­the clay model, the Life; the plaster cast, the Death; and the sculptured marble, the Resurrection,—­and it seemed to be made good by the spirit that was kindling up these imperfect features, like a lambent flame.

“I was not quite sure, at first glance, that I knew the face,” observed Hilda; “the likeness surely is not a striking one.  There is a good deal of external resemblance, still, to the features of the Faun of Praxiteles, between whom and Donatello, you know, we once insisted that there was a perfect twin-brotherhood.  But the expression is now so very different!”

“What do you take it to be?” asked the sculptor.

“I hardly know how to define it,” she answered.  “But it has an effect as if I could see this countenance gradually brightening while I look at it.  It gives the impression of a growing intellectual power and moral sense.  Donatello’s face used to evince little more than a genial, pleasurable sort of vivacity, and capability of enjoyment.  But here, a soul is being breathed into him; it is the Faun, but advancing towards a state of higher development.”

“Hilda, do you see all this?” exclaimed Kenyon, in considerable surprise.  “I may have had such an idea in my mind, but was quite unaware that I had succeeded in conveying it into the marble.”

“Forgive me,” said Hilda, “but I question whether this striking effect has been brought about by any skill or purpose on the sculptor’s part.  Is it not, perhaps, the chance result of the bust being just so far shaped out, in the marble, as the process of moral growth had advanced in the original?  A few more strokes of the chisel might change the whole expression, and so spoil it for what it is now worth.”

“I believe you are right,” answered Kenyon, thoughtfully examining his work; “and, strangely enough, it was the very expression that I tried unsuccessfully to produce in the clay model.  Well; not another chip shall be struck from the marble.”