"My dear Count," said he, "I have a proposal to make. You must let me

employ a little of my leisure in modelling your bust. You remember what

a striking resemblance we all of us--Hilda, Miriam, and I--found between

your features and those of the Faun of Praxiteles. Then, it seemed an

identity; but now that I know your face better, the likeness is far less

apparent. Your head in marble would be a treasure to me. Shall I have

it?"

"I have a weakness which I fear I cannot overcome," replied the Count,

turning away his face. "It troubles me to be looked at steadfastly."

"I have observed it since we have been sitting here, though never

before," rejoined the sculptor. "It is a kind of nervousness, I

apprehend, which, you caught in the Roman air, and which grows upon you,

in your solitary life. It need be no hindrance to my taking your bust;

for I will catch the likeness and expression by side glimpses, which

(if portrait painters and bust makers did but know it) always bring home

richer results than a broad stare."

"You may take me if you have the power," said Donatello; but, even as he

spoke, he turned away his face; "and if you can see what makes me shrink

from you, you are welcome to put it in the bust. It is not my will, but

my necessity, to avoid men's eyes. Only," he added, with a smile which

made Kenyon doubt whether he might not as well copy the Faun as model a

new bust,--"only, you know, you must not insist on my uncovering these

ears of mine!"

"Nay; I never should dream of such a thing," answered the sculptor,

laughing, as the young Count shook his clustering curls. "I could not

hope to persuade you, remembering how Miriam once failed!"

Nothing is more unaccountable than the spell that often lurks in a

spoken word. A thought may be present to the mind, so distinctly that

no utterance could make it more so; and two minds may be conscious of

the same thought, in which one or both take the profoundest interest;

but as long as it remains unspoken, their familiar talk flows quietly

over the hidden idea, as a rivulet may sparkle and dimple over something

sunken in its bed. But speak the word, and it is like bringing up a

drowned body out of the deepest pool of the rivulet, which has been

aware of the horrible secret all along, in spite of its smiling surface.

And even so, when Kenyon chanced to make a distinct reference to

Donatello's relations with Miriam (though the subject was already in

both their minds), a ghastly emotion rose up out of the depths of the

young Count's heart. He trembled either with anger or terror, and

glared at the sculptor with wild eyes, like a wolf that meets you in

the forest, and hesitates whether to flee or turn to bay. But, as Kenyon

still looked calmly at him, his aspect gradually became less disturbed,

though far from resuming its former quietude.




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