Miriam's model has so important a connection with our story, that it is

essential to describe the singular mode of his first appearance, and

how he subsequently became a self-appointed follower of the young female

artist. In the first place, however, we must devote a page or two to

certain peculiarities in the position of Miriam herself.

There was an ambiguity about this young lady, which, though it did not

necessarily imply anything wrong, would have operated unfavorably as

regarded her reception in society, anywhere but in Rome. The truth was,

that nobody knew anything about Miriam, either for good or evil. She had

made her appearance without introduction, had taken a studio, put her

card upon the door, and showed very considerable talent as a painter in

oils. Her fellow professors of the brush, it is true, showered abundant

criticisms upon her pictures, allowing them to be well enough for the

idle half-efforts of an amateur, but lacking both the trained skill and

the practice that distinguish the works of a true artist.

Nevertheless, be their faults what they might, Miriam's pictures met

with good acceptance among the patrons of modern art. Whatever technical

merit they lacked, its absence was more than supplied by a warmth

and passionateness, which she had the faculty of putting into her

productions, and which all the world could feel. Her nature had a great

deal of color, and, in accordance with it, so likewise had her pictures.

Miriam had great apparent freedom of intercourse; her manners were so

far from evincing shyness, that it seemed easy to become acquainted with

her, and not difficult to develop a casual acquaintance into intimacy.

Such, at least, was the impression which she made, upon brief contact,

but not such the ultimate conclusion of those who really sought to know

her. So airy, free, and affable was Miriam's deportment towards all who

came within her sphere, that possibly they might never be conscious of

the fact, but so it was, that they did not get on, and were seldom any

further advanced into her good graces to-day than yesterday. By some

subtile quality, she kept people at a distance, without so much as

letting them know that they were excluded from her inner circle. She

resembled one of those images of light, which conjurers evoke and cause

to shine before us, in apparent tangibility, only an arm's length beyond

our grasp: we make a step in advance, expecting to seize the illusion,

but find it still precisely so far out of our reach. Finally, society

began to recognize the impossibility of getting nearer to Miriam, and

gruffly acquiesced.

There were two persons, however, whom she appeared to acknowledge as

friends in the closer and truer sense of the word; and both of these

more favored individuals did credit to Miriam's selection. One was

a young American sculptor, of high promise and rapidly increasing

celebrity; the other, a girl of the same country, a painter like Miriam

herself, but in a widely different sphere of art. Her heart flowed out

towards these two; she requited herself by their society and friendship

(and especially by Hilda's) for all the loneliness with which, as

regarded the rest of the world, she chose to be surrounded. Her two

friends were conscious of the strong, yearning grasp which Miriam laid

upon them, and gave her their affection in full measure; Hilda, indeed,

responding with the fervency of a girl's first friendship, and Kenyon

with a manly regard, in which there was nothing akin to what is

distinctively called love.




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