CHAPTER XLII.
REMINISCENCES OF MIRIAM When Hilda and himself turned away from the unfinished bust, the sculptor's mind still dwelt upon the reminiscences which it suggested.
"You have not seen Donatello recently," he remarked, "and therefore cannot be aware how sadly he is changed." "No wonder!" exclaimed Hilda, growing pale.
The terrible scene which she had witnessed, when Donatello's face gleamed out in so fierce a light, came back upon her memory, almost for the first time since she knelt at the confessional.

Hilda, as is sometimes the case with persons whose delicate organization requires a peculiar safeguard, had an elastic faculty of throwing off such recollections as would be too painful for endurance.

The first shock of Donatello's and Miriam's crime had, indeed, broken through the frail defence of this voluntary forgetfulness; but, once enabled to relieve herself of the ponderous anguish over which she had so long brooded, she had practised a subtile watchfulness in preventing its return.
"No wonder, do you say ?" repeated the sculptor, looking at her with interest, but not exactly with surprise; for he had long suspected that Hilda had a painful knowledge of events which he himself little more than surmised.

"Then you know!--you have heard! But what can you possibly have heard, and through what channel ?" "Nothing!" replied Hilda faintly.

"Not one word has reached my ears from the lips of any human being.