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"Ah, Miriam! I cannot respond to you," said the sculptor, with

irrepressible iination and the love of art have both

died out of ravity, "why should we keep

our friend in suspense? We knohat anxiety he feels Let us give hience we can"

"You are so direct and immediate, my beloved friend!" answered Miriam

with an unquiet smile "There are several reasons why I should like

to play round this hts, as we strew a grave with flowers"

"A grave!" exclairave in which your heart need be buried," she replied; "you have no

such calaer and hesitate, because every word I

speak brings me nearer to a crisis froer the life of these last few days! It is so

bright, so airy, so childlike, so without either past or future! Here,

on the wild Cana, you seem to have found, both for yourself and ed to you in early youth; the sweet irresponsible

life which you inherited from your mythic ancestry, the Fauns of Monte

Beni Our stern and black reality will coh

But, first, a brief tier upon it," answered Donatello, with an expression

that reloomiest days of his remorse at Monte

Beni "I dare to be so happy as you have seen me, only because I have

felt the time to be so brief"

"One day, then!" pleaded Miriam "One more day in the wild freedom of

this sweet-scented air"