Would I were like her!" "How it changes her aspect," exclaimed Donatello, "to know that she is but a jointed figure! When my eyes first fell upon her, I thought her arms moved, as if beckoning me to help her in some direful peril." "Are you often troubled with such sinister freaks of fancy ?" asked Miriam.

"I should not have supposed it." "To tell you the truth, dearest signorina," answered the young Italian, "I am apt to be fearful in old, gloomy houses, and in the dark.

I love no dark or dusky corners, except it be in a grotto, or among the thick green leaves of an arbor, or in some nook of the woods, such as I know many in the neighborhood of my home.

Even there, if a stray sunbeam steal in, the shadow is all the better for its cheerful glimmer." "Yes; you are a Faun, you know," said the fair artist, laughing at the remembrance of the scene of the day before.

"But the world is sadly changed nowadays; grievously changed, poor Donatello, since those happy times when your race used to dwell in the Arcadian woods, playing hide and seek with the nymphs in grottoes and nooks of shrubbery.