"And how sweet a toil to bend and adapt my whole nature to do him good! To instruct, to elevate, to enrich his mind with the wealth that would flow in upon me, had I such a motive for acquiring it! Who else can perform the task?
Who else has the tender sympathy which he requires?
Who else, save only me,--a woman, a sharer in the same dread secret, a partaker in one identical guilt,--could meet him on such terms of intimate equality as the case demands?
With this object before me, I might feel a right to live! Without it, it is a shame for me to have lived so long." "I fully agree with you," said Kenyon, "that your true place is by his side." "Surely it is," replied Miriam.

"If Donatello is entitled to aught on earth, it is to my complete self-sacrifice for his sake.

It does not weaken his claim, methinks, that my only prospect of happiness a fearful word, however lies in the good that may accrue to him from our intercourse.

But he rejects me! He will not listen to the whisper of his heart, telling him that she, most wretched, who beguiled him into evil, might guide him to a higher innocence than that from which he fell.

How is this first great difficulty to be obviated ?" "It lies at your own option, Miriam, to do away the obstacle, at any moment," remarked the sculptor.