A Moonlight Ramble

"Donatello, you had better take one of those gay, boyish artists for
your companion," said Miriam, when she found the Italian youth at
her side. "I am not now in a merry mood, as when we set all the world
a-dancing the other afternoon, in the Borghese grounds."

"I never wish to dance any more," answered Donatello.

"What a melancholy was in that tone!" exclaimed Miriam. "You are getting
spoilt in this dreary Rome, and will be as wise and as wretched as all
the rest of mankind, unless you go back soon to your Tuscan vineyards.
Well; give me your arm, then! But take care that no friskiness comes
over you. We must walk evenly and heavily to-night!"

The party arranged itself according to its natural affinities or casual
likings; a sculptor generally choosing a painter, and a painter a
sculp--tor, for his companion, in preference to brethren of their own
art. Kenyon would gladly have taken Hilda to himself, and have drawn
her a little aside from the throng of merry wayfarers. But she kept near
Miriam, and seemed, in her gentle and quiet way, to decline a separate
alliance either with him or any other of her acquaintances.

So they set forth, and had gone but a little way, when the narrow street
emerged into a piazza, on one side of which, glistening and dimpling in
the moonlight, was the most famous fountain in Rome. Its murmur--not
to say its uproar--had been in the ears of the company, ever since they
came into the open air. It was the Fountain of Trevi, which draws its
precious water from a source far beyond the walls, whence it flows
hitherward through old subterranean aqueducts, and sparkles forth as
pure as the virgin who first led Agrippa to its well-spring, by her
father's door.