"What I most marvel at," said Miriam, "is the womanhood that you have so
thoroughly mixed up with all those seemingly discordant elements. Where
did you get that secret? You never found it in your gentle Hilda, yet I
recognize its truth."
"No, surely, it was not in Hilda," said Kenyon. "Her womanhood is of the
ethereal type, and incompatible with any shadow of darkness or evil."
"You are right," rejoined Miriam; "there are women of that ethereal
type, as you term it, and Hilda is one of them. She would die of her
first wrong-doing,--supposing for a moment that she could be capable of
doing wrong. Of sorrow, slender as she seems, Hilda might bear a great
burden; of sin, not a feather's weight. Methinks now, were it my doom, I
could bear either, or both at once; but my conscience is still as white
as Hilda's. Do you question it?"
"Heaven forbid, Miriam!" exclaimed the sculptor.
He was startled at the strange turn which she had so suddenly given to
the conversation. Her voice, too,--so much emotion was stifled rather
than expressed in it, sounded unnatural.
"O, my friend," cried she, with sudden passion, "will you be my friend
indeed? I am lonely, lonely, lonely! There is a secret in my heart that
burns me,--that tortures me! Sometimes I fear to go mad of it; sometimes
I hope to die of it; but neither of the two happens. Ah, if I could but
whisper it to only one human soul! And you--you see far into womanhood;
you receive it widely into your large view. Perhaps--perhaps, but Heaven
only knows, you might understand me! O, let me speak!"
"Miriam, dear friend," replied the sculptor, "if I can help you, speak
freely, as to a brother."
"Help me? No!" said Miriam.
Kenyon's response had been perfectly frank and kind; and yet the
subtlety of Miriam's emotion detected a certain reserve and alarm in his
warmly expressed readiness to hear her story. In his secret soul, to
say the truth, the sculptor doubted whether it were well for this
poor, suffering girl to speak what she so yearned to say, or for him
to listen. If there were any active duty of friendship to be performed,
then, indeed, he would joyfully have come forward to do his best. But if
it were only a pent-up heart that sought an outlet? in that case it was
by no means so certain that a confession would do good. The more her
secret struggled and fought to be told, the more certain would it be to
change all former relations that had subsisted between herself and the
friend to whom she might reveal it. Unless he could give her all the
sympathy, and just the kind of sympathy that the occasion required,
Miriam would hate him by and by, and herself still more, if he let her
speak.