Donatello stirred uneasily, with the irritable impatience that is often
combined With a mood of leaden despondency. A brown lizard with two
tails--a monster often engendered by the Roman sunshine--ran across his
foot, and made him start. Then he sat silent awhile, and so did Miriam,
trying to dissolve her whole heart into sympathy, and lavish it all upon
him, were it only for a moment's cordial.
The young man lifted his hand to his breast, and, unintentionally, as
Miriam's hand was within his, he lifted that along with it. "I have a
great weight here!" said he. The fancy struck Miriam (but she drove it
resolutely down) that Donatello almost imperceptibly shuddered, while,
in pressing his own hand against his heart, he pressed hers there too.
"Rest your heart on me, dearest one!" she resumed. "Let me bear all its
weight; I am well able to bear it; for I am a woman, and I love you! I
love you, Donatello! Is there no comfort for you in this avowal? Look
at me! Heretofore you have found me pleasant to your sight. Gaze into my
eyes! Gaze into my soul! Search as deeply as you may, you can never see
half the tenderness and devotion that I henceforth cherish for you. All
that I ask is your acceptance of the utter self-sacrifice (but it shall
be no sacrifice, to my great love) with which I seek to remedy the evil
you have incurred for my sake!"
All this fervor on Miriam's part; on Donatello's, a heavy silence.
"O, speak to me!" she exclaimed. "Only promise me to be, by and by, a
little happy!"
"Happy?" murmured Donatello. "Ah, never again! never again!"
"Never? Ah, that is a terrible word to say to me!" answered Miriam. "A
terrible word to let fall upon a woman's heart, when she loves you, and
is conscious of having caused your misery! If you love me, Donatello,
speak it not again. And surely you did love me?"
"I did," replied Donatello gloomily and absently.
Miriam released the young man's hand, but suffered one of her own to
lie close to his, and waited a moment to see whether he would make
any effort to retain it. There was much depending upon that simple
experiment.
With a deep sigh--as when, sometimes, a slumberer turns over in a
troubled dream Donatello changed his position, and clasped both his
hands over his forehead. The genial warmth of a Roman April kindling
into May was in the atmosphere around them; but when Miriam saw
that involuntary movement and heard that sigh of relief (for so she
interpreted it), a shiver ran through her frame, as if the iciest wind
of the Apennines were blowing over her.
"He has done himself a greater wrong than I dreamed of," thought she,
with unutterable compassion. "Alas! it was a sad mistake! He might
have had a kind of bliss in the consequences of this deed, had he been
impelled to it by a love vital enough to survive the frenzy of that
terrible moment, mighty enough to make its own law, and justify itself
against the natural remorse. But to have perpetrated a dreadful murder
(and such was his crime, unless love, annihilating moral distinctions,
made it otherwise) on no better warrant than a boy's idle fantasy! I
pity him from the very depths of my soul! As for myself, I am past my
own or other's pity."