I have watched it a hundred times at its work; but I did not dream that you had won Hilda so far! How have you persuaded that shy maiden to let you take her hand in marble ?" "Never! She never knew it!" hastily replied Kenyon, anxious to vindicate his mistress's maidenly reserve.

"I stole it from her.

The hand is a reminiscence.

After gazing at it so often, and even holding it once for an instant, when Hilda was not thinking of me, I should be a bungler indeed, if I could not now reproduce it to something like the life." "May you win the original one day!" said Miriam kindly.
"I have little ground to hope it," answered the sculptor despondingly; "Hilda does not dwell in our mortal atmosphere; and gentle and soft as she appears, it will be as difficult to win her heart as to entice down a white bird from its sunny freedom in the sky.

It is strange, with all her delicacy and fragility, the impression she makes of being utterly sufficient to herself.