"O, gladly!" cried Kenyon, who had long wished to model that beautiful

and most expressive face. "When will you begin to sit?"

"Poh! that was not what I meant," said Miriam. "Come, show me something

else."

"Do you recognize this?" asked the sculptor.

He took out of his desk a little old-fashioned ivory coffer, yellow

with age; it was richly carved with antique figures and foliage; and had

Kenyon thought fit to say that Benvenuto Cellini wrought this precious

box, the skill and elaborate fancy of the work would by no means have

discredited his word, nor the old artist's fame. At least, it was

evidently a production of Benvenuto's school and century, and might

once have been the jewel-case of some grand lady at the court of the De'

Medici.

Lifting the lid, however, no blaze of diamonds was disclosed, but

only, lapped in fleecy cotton, a small, beautifully shaped hand, most

delicately sculptured in marble. Such loving care and nicest art had

been lavished here, that the palm really seemed to have a tenderness

in its very substance. Touching those lovely fingers,--had the jealous

sculptor allowed you to touch,--you could hardly believe that a virgin

warmth would not steal from them into your heart.

"Ah, this is very beautiful!" exclaimed Miriam, with a genial smile.

"It is as good in its way as Loulie's hand with its baby-dimples, which

Powers showed me at Florence, evidently valuing it as much as if he

had wrought it out of a piece of his great heart. As good as Harriet

Hosmer's clasped hands of Browning and his wife, symbolizing the

individuality and heroic union of two high, poetic lives! Nay, I do not

question that it is better than either of those, because you must

have wrought it passionately, in spite of its maiden palm and dainty

fingertips."

"Then you do recognize it?" asked Kenyon.

"There is but one right hand on earth that could have supplied

the model," answered Miriam; "so small and slender, so perfectly

symmetrical, and yet with a character of delicate energy. I have watched

it a hundred times at its work; but I did not dream that you had won

Hilda so far! How have you persuaded that shy maiden to let you take her

hand in marble?"

"Never! She never knew it!" hastily replied Kenyon, anxious to vindicate

his mistress's maidenly reserve. "I stole it from her. The hand is a

reminiscence. After gazing at it so often, and even holding it once for

an instant, when Hilda was not thinking of me, I should be a bungler

indeed, if I could not now reproduce it to something like the life."

"May you win the original one day!" said Miriam kindly.

"I have little ground to hope it," answered the sculptor despondingly;

"Hilda does not dwell in our mortal atmosphere; and gentle and soft as

she appears, it will be as difficult to win her heart as to entice down

a white bird from its sunny freedom in the sky. It is strange, with all

her delicacy and fragility, the impression she makes of being utterly

sufficient to herself. No; I shall never win her. She is abundantly

capable of sympathy, and delights to receive it, but she has no need of

love."




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