The Faun's Transformation

The door of the courtyard swung slowly, and closed itself of its own
accord. Miriam and Donatello were now alone there. She clasped her
hands, and looked wildly at the young man, whose form seemed to have
dilated, and whose eyes blazed with the fierce energy that had suddenly
inspired him. It had kindled him into a man; it had developed within him
an intelligence which was no native characteristic of the Donatello whom
we have heretofore known. But that simple and joyous creature was gone
forever.

"What have you done?" said Miriam, in a horror-stricken whisper.

The glow of rage was still lurid on Donatello's face, and now flashed
out again from his eyes.

"I did what ought to be done to a traitor!" he replied. "I did what your
eyes bade me do, when I asked them with mine, as I held the wretch over
the precipice!"

These last words struck Miriam like a bullet. Could it be so? Had her
eyes provoked or assented to this deed? She had not known it. But, alas!
looking back into the frenzy and turmoil of the scene just acted, she
could not deny--she was not sure whether it might be so, or no--that a
wild joy had flamed up in her heart, when she beheld her persecutor in
his mortal peril. Was it horror?--or ecstasy? or both in one? Be the
emotion what it might, it had blazed up more madly, when Donatello
flung his victim off the cliff, and more and more, while his shriek went
quivering downward. With the dead thump upon the stones below had come
an unutterable horror.