A playfulness came out of his heart, and glimmered like firelight in his actions, alternating, or even closely intermingled, with profound sympathy and serious thought.
"Is he not beautiful ?" said Miriam, watching the sculptor's eye as it dwelt admiringly on Donatello.

"So changed, yet still, in a deeper sense, so much the same! He has travelled in a circle, as all things heavenly and earthly do, and now comes back to his original self, with an inestimable treasure of improvement won from an experience of pain.
How wonderful is this! I tremble at my own thoughts, yet must needs probe them to their depths.

Was the crime--in which he and I were wedded--was it a blessing, in that strange disguise?
Was it a means of education, bringing a simple and imperfect nature to a point of feeling and intelligence which it could have reached under no other discipline ?" "You stir up deep and perilous matter, Miriam," replied Kenyon.

"I dare not follow you into the unfathomable abysses whither you are tending." "Yet there is a pleasure in them! I delight to brood on the verge of this great mystery," returned she.

"The story of the fall of man! Is it not repeated in our romance of Monte Beni?
And may we follow the analogy yet further?
Was that very sin,--into which Adam precipitated himself and all his race, was it the destined means by which, over a long pathway of toil and sorrow, we are to attain a higher, brighter, and profounder happiness, than our lost birthright gave?
Will not this idea account for the permitted existence of sin, as no other theory can ?" "It is too dangerous, Miriam! I cannot follow you!" repeated the sculptor.