His unrestrained grief and childish tears made Kenyon sensible in how small a degree the customs and restraints of society had really acted upon this young man, in spite of the quietude of his ordinary deportment.

In response to his friend's efforts to console him, he murmured words hardly more articulate than the strange chant which he had so recently been breathing into the air.
"They know it!" was all that Kenyon could yet distinguish,--"they know it!" "Who know it ?" asked the sculptor.

"And what is it their know ?" "They know it!" repeated Donatello, trembling.

"They shun me! All nature shrinks from me, and shudders at me! I live in the midst of a curse, that hems me round with a circle of fire! No innocent thing can come near me." "Be comforted, my dear friend," said Kenyon, kneeling beside him.

"You labor under some illusion, but no curse.