A good deal more depressed than the nature of the disappointment

warranted, Kenyon went to his studio, and took in hand a great lump of

clay. He soon found, however, that his plastic cunning had departed from

him for the time. So he wandered forth again into the uneasy streets

of Rome, and walked up and down the Corso, where, at that period of the

day, a throng of passers-by and loiterers choked up the narrow sidewalk.

A penitent was thus brought in contact with the sculptor.

It was a figure in a white robe, with a kind of featureless mask

over the face, through the apertures of which the eyes threw an

unintelligible light. Such odd, questionable shapes are often seen

gliding through the streets of Italian cities, and are understood to be

usually persons of rank, who quit their palaces, their gayeties, their

pomp and pride, and assume the penitential garb for a season, with a

view of thus expiating some crime, or atoning for the aggregate of petty

sins that make up a worldly life. It is their custom to ask alms, and

perhaps to measure the duration of their penance by the time requisite

to accumulate a sum of money out of the little droppings of individual

charity. The avails are devoted to some beneficent or religious purpose;

so that the benefit accruing to their own souls is, in a manner, linked

with a good done, or intended, to their fellow-men. These figures have

a ghastly and startling effect, not so much from any very impressive

peculiarity in the garb, as from the mystery which they bear about with

them, and the sense that there is an acknowledged sinfulness as the

nucleus of it.

In the present instance, however, the penitent asked no alms of Kenyon;

although, for the space of a minute or two, they stood face to face, the

hollow eyes of the mask encountering the sculptor's gaze. But, just as

the crowd was about to separate them, the former spoke, in a voice not

unfamiliar to Kenyon, though rendered remote and strange by the guilty

veil through which it penetrated.

"Is all well with you, Signore?" inquired the penitent, out of the cloud

in which he walked.

"All is well," answered Kenyon. "And with you?"

But the masked penitent returned no answer, being borne away by the

pressure of the throng.

The sculptor stood watching the figure, and was almost of a mind to

hurry after him and follow up the conversation that had been begun; but

it occurred to him that there is a sanctity (or, as we might rather term

it, an inviolable etiquette) which prohibits the recognition of persons

who choose to walk under the veil of penitence.

"How strange!" thought Kenyon to himself. "It was surely Donatello! What

can bring him to Rome, where his recollections must be so painful, and

his presence not without peril? And Miriam! Can she have accompanied

him?"




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