The Marble Faun Volume 1 - Page 110/130

The Church of the Capuchins (where, as the reader may remember, some of

our acquaintances had made an engagement to meet) stands a little aside

from the Piazza Barberini. Thither, at the hour agreed upon, on the

morning after the scenes last described, Miriam and Donatello directed

their steps. At no time are people so sedulously careful to keep their

trifling appointments, attend to their ordinary occupations, and thus

put a commonplace aspect on life, as when conscious of some secret that

if suspected would make them look monstrous in the general eye.

Yet how tame and wearisome is the impression of all ordinary things in

the contrast with such a fact! How sick and tremulous, the next morning,

is the spirit that has dared so much only the night before! How icy cold

is the heart, when the fervor, the wild ecstasy of passion has faded

away, and sunk down among the dead ashes of the fire that blazed so

fiercely, and was fed by the very substance of its life! How faintly

does the criminal stagger onward, lacking the impulse of that strong

madness that hurried him into guilt, and treacherously deserts him in

the midst of it!

When Miriam and Donatello drew near the church, they found only Kenyon

awaiting them on the steps. Hilda had likewise promised to be of the

party, but had not yet appeared. Meeting the sculptor, Miriam put a

force upon herself and succeeded in creating an artificial flow

of spirits, which, to any but the nicest observation, was quite as

effective as a natural one. She spoke sympathizingly to the sculptor on

the subject of Hilda's absence, and somewhat annoyed him by alluding in

Donatello's hearing to an attachment which had never been openly avowed,

though perhaps plainly enough betrayed. He fancied that Miriam did not

quite recognize the limits of the strictest delicacy; he even went so

far as to generalize, and conclude within himself, that this deficiency

is a more general failing in woman than in man, the highest refinement

being a masculine attribute.

But the idea was unjust to the sex at large, and especially so to this

poor Miriam, who was hardly responsible for her frantic efforts to be

gay. Possibly, moreover, the nice action of the mind is set ajar by any

violent shock, as of great misfortune or great crime, so that the finer

perceptions may be blurred thenceforth, and the effect be traceable in

all the minutest conduct of life.

"Did you see anything of the dear child after you left us?" asked

Miriam, still keeping Hilda as her topic of conversation. "I missed her

sadly on my way homeward; for nothing insures me such delightful and

innocent dreams (I have experienced it twenty times) as a talk late in

the evening with Hilda."

"So I should imagine," said the sculptor gravely; "but it is an

advantage that I have little or no opportunity of enjoying. I know not

what became of Hilda after my parting from you. She was not especially

my companion in any part of our walk. The last I saw of her she

was hastening back to rejoin you in the courtyard of the Palazzo

Caffarelli."