Yet an impulse of rectitude impelled Miriam to give him what she still
held to be a needless warning against an imaginary peril.
"If you were wiser, Donatello, you would think me a dangerous person,"
said she, "If you follow my footsteps, they will lead you to no good.
You ought to be afraid of me."
"I would as soon think of fearing the air we breathe," he replied.
"And well you may, for it is full of malaria," said Miriam; she went on,
hinting at an intangible confession, such as persons with overburdened
hearts often make to children or dumb animals, or to holes in the earth,
where they think their secrets may be at once revealed and buried.
"Those who come too near me are in danger of great mischiefs, I do
assure you. Take warning, therefore! It is a sad fatality that has
brought you from your home among the Apennines,--some rusty old castle,
I suppose, with a village at its foot, and an Arcadian environment of
vineyards, fig-trees, and olive orchards,--a sad mischance, I say, that
has transported you to my side. You have had a happy life hitherto, have
you not, Donatello?"
"O, yes," answered the young man; and, though not of a retrospective
turn, he made the best effort he could to send his mind back into the
past. "I remember thinking it happiness to dance with the contadinas at
a village feast; to taste the new, sweet wine at vintage-time, and the
old, ripened wine, which our podere is famous for, in the cold winter
evenings; and to devour great, luscious figs, and apricots, peaches,
cherries, and melons. I was often happy in the woods, too, with hounds
and horses, and very happy in watching all sorts, of creatures and birds
that haunt the leafy solitudes. But never half so happy as now!"
"In these delightful groves?" she asked.
"Here, and with you," answered Donatello. "Just as we are now."
"What a fulness of content in him! How silly, and how delightful!" said
Miriam to herself. Then addressing him again: "But, Donatello, how long
will this happiness last?"
"How long!" he exclaimed; for it perplexed him even more to think of the
future than to remember the past. "Why should it have any end? How long!
Forever! forever! forever!"
"The child! the simpleton!" said Miriam, with sudden laughter, and
checking it as suddenly. "But is he a simpleton indeed? Here, in those
few natural words, he has expressed that deep sense, that profound
conviction of its own immortality, which genuine love never fails to
bring. He perplexes me,--yes, and bewitches me,--wild, gentle, beautiful
creature that he is! It is like playing with a young greyhound!"
Her eyes filled with tears, at the same time that a smile shone out of
them. Then first she became sensible of a delight and grief at once, in
feeling this zephyr of a new affection, with its untainted freshness,
blow over her weary, stifled heart, which had no right to be revived by
it. The very exquisiteness of the enjoyment made her know that it ought
to be a forbidden one.