The Marble Faun Volume 1 - Page 127/130

Yet, in the wantonness of her despair, Miriam made one more step towards

the friend whom she had lost. "Do not come nearer, Miriam!" said

Hilda. Her look and tone were those of sorrowful entreaty, and yet

they expressed a kind of confidence, as if the girl were conscious of a

safeguard that could not be violated.

"What has happened between us, Hilda?" asked Miriam. "Are we not

friends?"

"No, no!" said Hilda, shuddering.

"At least we have been friends," continued Miriam. "I loved you dearly!

I love you still! You were to me as a younger sister; yes, dearer than

sisters of the same blood; for you and I were so lonely, Hilda, that the

whole world pressed us together by its solitude and strangeness. Then,

will you not touch my hand? Am I not the same as yesterday?"

"Alas! no, Miriam!" said Hilda.

"Yes, the same, the same for you, Hilda," rejoined her lost friend.

"Were you to touch my hand, you would find it as warm to your grasp as

ever. If you were sick or suffering, I would watch night and day for

you. It is in such simple offices that true affection shows itself;

and so I speak of them. Yet now, Hilda, your very look seems to put me

beyond the limits of human kind!"

"It is not I, Miriam," said Hilda; "not I that have done this."

"You, and you only, Hilda," replied Miriam, stirred up to make her own

cause good by the repellent force which her friend opposed to her. "I am

a woman, as I was yesterday; endowed with the same truth of nature, the

same warmth of heart, the same genuine and earnest love, which you

have always known in me. In any regard that concerns yourself, I am not

changed. And believe me, Hilda, when a human being has chosen a friend

out of all the world, it is only some faithlessness between themselves,

rendering true intercourse impossible, that can justify either friend in

severing the bond. Have I deceived you? Then cast me off! Have I wronged

you personally? Then forgive me, if you can. But, have I sinned against

God and man, and deeply sinned? Then be more my friend than ever, for I

need you more."

"Do not bewilder me thus, Miriam!" exclaimed Hilda, who had not forborne

to express, by look and gesture, the anguish which this interview

inflicted on her. "If I were one of God's angels, with a nature

incapable of stain, and garments that never could be spotted, I would

keep ever at your side, and try to lead you upward. But I am a poor,

lonely girl, whom God has set here in an evil world, and given her only

a white robe, and bid her wear it back to Him, as white as when she put

it on. Your powerful magnetism would be too much for me. The pure, white

atmosphere, in which I try to discern what things are good and true,

would be discolored. And therefore, Miriam, before it is too late, I

mean to put faith in this awful heartquake which warns me henceforth to

avoid you."