"Donatello," said Miriam, looking at him thoughtfully, but amused, yet

not without a shade of sorrow, "you seem very happy; what makes you so?"

"Because I love you!" answered Donatello.

He made this momentous confession as if it were the most natural

thing in the world; and on her part,--such was the contagion of his

simplicity,--Miriam heard it without anger or disturbance, though with

no responding emotion. It was as if they had strayed across the limits

of Arcadia; and come under a civil polity where young men might avow

their passion with as little restraint as a bird pipes its note to a

similar purpose.

"Why should you love me, foolish boy?" said she. "We have no points of

sympathy at all. There are not two creatures more unlike, in this wide

world, than you and I!"

"You are yourself, and I am Donatello," replied he. "Therefore I love

you! There needs no other reason."

Certainly, there was no better or more explicable reason. It might

have been imagined that Donatello's unsophisticated heart would be more

readily attracted to a feminine nature of clear simplicity like his own,

than to one already turbid with grief or wrong, as Miriam's seemed to

be. Perhaps, On the other hand, his character needed the dark element,

which it found in her. The force and energy of will, that sometimes

flashed through her eyes, may have taken him captive; or, not

improbably, the varying lights and shadows of her temper, now so

mirthful, and anon so sad with mysterious gloom, had bewitched the

youth. Analyze the matter as we may, the reason assigned by Donatello

himself was as satisfactory as we are likely to attain.

Miriam could not think seriously of the avowal that had passed. He held

out his love so freely, in his open palm, that she felt it could be

nothing but a toy, which she might play with for an instant, and give

back again. And yet Donatello's heart was so fresh a fountain, that,

had Miriam been more world-worn than she was, she might have found

it exquisite to slake her thirst with the feelings that welled up and

brimmed over from it. She was far, very far, from the dusty mediaeval

epoch, when some women have a taste for such refreshment. Even for

her, however, there was an inexpressible charm in the simplicity that

prompted Donatello's words and deeds; though, unless she caught them

in precisely the true light, they seemed but folly, the offspring of

a maimed or imperfectly developed intellect. Alternately, she almost

admired, or wholly scorned him, and knew not which estimate resulted

from the deeper appreciation. But it could not, she decided for herself,

be other than an innocent pastime, if they two--sure to be separated by

their different paths in life, to-morrow--were to gather up some of the

little pleasures that chanced to grow about their feet, like the violets

and wood-anemones, to-day.




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