"O, gladly!" cried Kenyon, who had long wished to model that beautiful
and most expressive face. "When will you begin to sit?"
"Poh! that was not what I meant," said Miriam. "Come, show me something
else."
"Do you recognize this?" asked the sculptor.
He took out of his desk a little old-fashioned ivory coffer, yellow
with age; it was richly carved with antique figures and foliage; and had
Kenyon thought fit to say that Benvenuto Cellini wrought this precious
box, the skill and elaborate fancy of the work would by no means have
discredited his word, nor the old artist's fame. At least, it was
evidently a production of Benvenuto's school and century, and might
once have been the jewel-case of some grand lady at the court of the De'
Medici.
Lifting the lid, however, no blaze of diamonds was disclosed, but
only, lapped in fleecy cotton, a small, beautifully shaped hand, most
delicately sculptured in marble. Such loving care and nicest art had
been lavished here, that the palm really seemed to have a tenderness
in its very substance. Touching those lovely fingers,--had the jealous
sculptor allowed you to touch,--you could hardly believe that a virgin
warmth would not steal from them into your heart.
"Ah, this is very beautiful!" exclaimed Miriam, with a genial smile.
"It is as good in its way as Loulie's hand with its baby-dimples, which
Powers showed me at Florence, evidently valuing it as much as if he
had wrought it out of a piece of his great heart. As good as Harriet
Hosmer's clasped hands of Browning and his wife, symbolizing the
individuality and heroic union of two high, poetic lives! Nay, I do not
question that it is better than either of those, because you must
have wrought it passionately, in spite of its maiden palm and dainty
fingertips."
"Then you do recognize it?" asked Kenyon.
"There is but one right hand on earth that could have supplied
the model," answered Miriam; "so small and slender, so perfectly
symmetrical, and yet with a character of delicate energy. I have watched
it a hundred times at its work; but I did not dream that you had won
Hilda so far! How have you persuaded that shy maiden to let you take her
hand in marble?"
"Never! She never knew it!" hastily replied Kenyon, anxious to vindicate
his mistress's maidenly reserve. "I stole it from her. The hand is a
reminiscence. After gazing at it so often, and even holding it once for
an instant, when Hilda was not thinking of me, I should be a bungler
indeed, if I could not now reproduce it to something like the life."
"May you win the original one day!" said Miriam kindly.
"I have little ground to hope it," answered the sculptor despondingly;
"Hilda does not dwell in our mortal atmosphere; and gentle and soft as
she appears, it will be as difficult to win her heart as to entice down
a white bird from its sunny freedom in the sky. It is strange, with all
her delicacy and fragility, the impression she makes of being utterly
sufficient to herself. No; I shall never win her. She is abundantly
capable of sympathy, and delights to receive it, but she has no need of
love."