The Medici Gardens

"My sweet friend," she said, taking one of his passive hands in both of
hers, "what can I say to comfort you?"

"Nothing!" replied Donatello, with sombre reserve. "Nothing will ever
comfort me."

"I accept my own misery," continued Miriam, "my own guilt, if guilt it
be; and, whether guilt or misery, I shall know how to deal with it. But
you, dearest friend, that were the rarest creature in all this world,
and seemed a being to whom sorrow could not cling,--you, whom I
half fancied to belong to a race that had vanished forever, you only
surviving, to show mankind how genial and how joyous life used to be, in
some long-gone age,--what had you to do with grief or crime?"

"They came to me as to other men," said Donatello broodingly. "Doubtless
I was born to them."

"No, no; they came with me," replied Miriam. "Mine is the
responsibility! Alas! wherefore was I born? Why did we ever meet? Why
did I not drive you from me, knowing for my heart foreboded it--that the
cloud in which I walked would likewise envelop you!"

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.