"Need I tell you more?" asked Miriam, after proceeding thus far. "It is still a dim and dreary mystery, a gloomy twilight into which Iguide you; but possibly you may catch a glimpse of much that I myself can explain only by conjecture. At all events, you can comprehend what my situation must have been, after that fatal interview in the catacomb. My persecutor had gone thither for penance, but followed me forth with fresh impulses to crime. He had me in his power. Mad as he was, and wicked as he was, with one word he could have blasted me in the belief of all the world. In your belief too, and Hilda's!
Even Donatello would have shrunk from me with horror!""Never," said Donatello, "my instinct would have known you innocent.""Hilda and Donatello and myself,--we three would have acquitted you,"said Kenyon, "let the world say what it might. Ah, Miriam, you should have told us this sad story sooner!""I thought often of revealing it to you," answered Miriam; "on one occasion, especially,--it was after you had shown me your Cleopatra;it seemed to leap out of my heart, and got as far as my very lips.
But finding you cold to accept my confidence, I thrust it back again.
Had I obeyed my first impulse, all would have turned out differently.""And Hilda!" resumed the sculptor. "What can have been her connection with these dark incidents?""She will, doubtless, tell you with her own lips," replied Miriam.
"Through sources of information which I possess in Rome, I can assure you of her safety. In two days more--by the help of the special Providence that, as I love to tell you, watches over Hilda--she shall rejoin you.""Still two days morel" murmured the sculptor.
"Ah, you are cruel now! More cruel than you know!" exclaimed Miriam, with another gleam of that fantastic, fitful gayety, which had more than once marked her manner during this interview. "Spare your poor friends!""I know not what you mean, Miriam," said Kenyon.
"No matter," she replied; "you will understand hereafter. But could you think it? Here is Donatello haunted with strange remorse, and an unmitigable resolve to obtain what he deems justice upon himself. He fancies, with a kind of direct simplicity, which I have vainly tried to combat, that, when a wrong has been done, the doer is bound to submit himself to whatsoever tribunal takes cognizance of such things, and abide its judgment. I have assured him that there is no such thing as earthly justice, and especially none here, under the head of Christendom.""We will not argue the point again," said Donatello, smiling. "I have no head for argument, but only a sense, an impulse, an instinct, Ibelieve, which sometimes leads me right. But why do we talk now of what may make us sorrowful? There are still two days more. Let us be happy!"It appeared to Kenyon that since he last saw Donatello, some of the sweet and delightful characteristics of the antique Faun had returned to him. There were slight, careless graces, pleasant and simple peculiarities, that had been obliterated by the heavy grief through which he was passing at Monte Beni, and out of which he had hardly emerged when the sculptor parted with Miriam and him beneath the bronze pontiffs outstretched hand. These happy blossoms had now reappeared. A playfulness came out of his heart, and glimmered like firelight in his actions, alternating, or even closely intermingled, with profound sympathy and serious thought.
"Is he not beautiful?" said Miriam, watching the sculptor's eye as it dwelt admiringly on Donatello. "So changed, yet still, in a deeper sense, so much the same! He has travelled in a circle, as all things heavenly and earthly do, and now comes back to his original self, with an inestimable treasure of improvement won from an experience of pain.
How wonderful is this! I tremble at my own thoughts, yet must needs probe them to their depths. Was the crime--in which he and I were wedded--was it a blessing, in that strange disguise? Was it a means of education, bringing a simple and imperfect nature to a point of feeling and intelligence which it could have reached under no other discipline?""You stir up deep and perilous matter, Miriam," replied Kenyon. "Idare not follow you into the unfathomable abysses whither you are tending.""Yet there is a pleasure in them! I delight to brood on the verge of this great mystery," returned she. "The story of the fall of man! Is it not repeated in our romance of Monte Beni? And may we follow the analogy yet further? Was that very sin,--into which Adam precipitated himself and all his race, was it the destined means by which, over a long pathway of toil and sorrow, we are to attain a higher, brighter, and profounder happiness, than our lost birthright gave? Will not this idea account for the permitted existence of sin, as no other theory can?""It is too dangerous, Miriam! I cannot follow you!" repeated the sculptor. "Mortal man has no right to tread on the ground where you now set your feet.""Ask Hilda what she thinks of it," said Miriam, with a thoughtful smile. "At least, she might conclude that sin--which man chose instead of good--has been so beneficently handled by omniscience and omnipotence, that, whereas our dark enemy sought to destroy us by it, it has really become an instrument most effective in the education of intellect and soul."Miriam paused a little longer among these meditations, which the sculptor rightly felt to be so perilous; she then pressed his hand, in token of farewell.
"The day after to-morrow," said she, "an hour before sunset, go to the Corso, and stand in front of the fifth house on your left, beyond the Antonine column. You will learn tidings of a friend."Kenyon would have besought her for more definite intelligence, but she shook her head, put her finger on her lips, and turned away with an illusive smile. The fancy impressed him that she too, like Donatello, had reached a wayside paradise, in their mysterious life journey, where they both threw down the burden of the before and after, and, except for this interview with himself, were happy in the flitting moment. To-day Donatello was the sylvan Faun; to-day Miriam was his fit companion, a Nymph of grove or fountain; to-morrow--a remorseful man and woman, linked by a marriage bond of crime--they would set forth towards an inevitable goal.
