第68章

With a deep sigh--as when, sometimes, a slumberer turns over in a troubled dream Donatello changed his position, and clasped both his hands over his forehead.The genial warmth of a Roman April kindling into May was in the atmosphere around them; but when Miriam saw that involuntary movement and heard that sigh of relief (for so she interpreted it), a shiver ran through her frame, as if the iciest wind of the Apennines were blowing over her.

"He has done himself a greater wrong than I dreamed of," thought she, with unutterable compassion."Alas! it was a sad mistake! He might have had a kind of bliss in the consequences of this deed, had he been impelled to it by a love vital enough to survive the frenzy of that terrible moment, mighty enough to make its own law, and justify itself against the natural remorse.But to have perpetrated a dreadful murder (and such was his crime, unless love, annihilating moral distinctions, made it otherwise) on no better warrant than a boy's idle fantasy! I pity him from the very depths of my soul! As for myself, I am past my own or other's pity."She arose from the young man's side, and stood before him with a sad, commiserating aspect; it was the look of a ruined soul, bewailing, in him, a grief less than what her profounder sympathies imposed upon herself.

"Donatello, we must part," she said, with melancholy firmness."Yes; leave me! Go back to your old tower, which overlooks the green valley you have told me of among the Apennines.Then, all that has passed will be recognized as but an ugly dream.For in dreams the conscience sleeps, and we often stain ourselves with guilt of which we should be incapable inour waking moments.The deed you seemed to do, last night, was no more than such a dream; there was as little substance in what you fancied yourself doing. Go; and forget it all!""Ah, that terrible face!" said Donatello, pressing his hands over his eyes. "Do you call that unreal?""Yes; for you beheld it with dreaming eyes," replied Miriam."It was unreal; and, that you may feel it so, it is requisite that you see this face of mine no more.Once, you may have thought it beautiful; now, it has lost its charm.Yet it would still retain a miserable potency' to bring back the past illusion, and, in its train, the remorse and anguish that would darken all your life. Leave me, therefore, and forget me.""Forget you, Miriam!" said Donatello, roused somewhat from his apathy of despair.

"If I could remember you, and behold you, apart from that frightful visage which stares at me over your shoulder, that were a consolation, at least, if not a joy.""But since that visage haunts you along with mine," rejoined Miriam, glancing behind her, "we needs must part.Farewell, then!But if ever-- in distress, peril, shame, poverty, or whatever anguish is most poignant, whatever burden heaviest--you should require a life to be given wholly, only to make your own a little easier, then summon me! As the case now stands between us, you have bought me dear, and find me of little worth.Fling me away, therefore! May you never need me more! But, if otherwise, a wish--almost an unuttered wish will bring me to you!"She stood a moment, expecting a reply.But Donatello's eyes had again fallen on the ground, and he had not, in his bewildered mind and overburdened heart, a word to respond.

"That hour I speak of may never come," said Miriam."So farewell-- farewell forever.""Farewell," said Donatello.

His voice hardly made its way through the environment of unaccustomed thoughts and emotions which had settled over him like a dense and dark cloud.Not improbably, he beheld Miriam through so dim a medium that she looked visionary; heard her speak only in a thin, faintecho.

She turned from the young man, and, much as her heart yearned towards him, she would not profane that heavy parting by an embrace, or even a pressure of the hand.So soon after the semblance of such mighty love, and after it had been the impulse to so terrible a deed, they parted, in all outward show, as coldly as people part whose whole mutual intercourse has been encircled within a single hour.

And Donatello, when Miriam had departed, stretched himself at full length on the stone bench, and drew his hat over his eyes, as the idle and light-hearted youths of dreamy Italy are accustomed to do, when they lie down in the first convenient shade, and snatch a noonday slumber.A stupor was upon him, which he mistook for such drowsiness as he had known in his innocent past life.But, by and by, he raised himself slowly and left the garden.Sometimes poor Donatello started, as if he heard a shriek; sometimes he shrank back, as if a face, fearful to behold, were thrust close to his own.In this dismal mood, bewildered with the novelty of sin and grief, he had little left of that singular resemblance, on account of which, and for their sport, his three friends had fantastically recognized him as the veritable Faun of Praxiteles.