"donatello," said miriam, looking at him thoughtfully, but amused, yet not without a shade of sorrow, "you seem very happy; what makes you so?""because i love you!"answered donatello.
he made this momentous confession as if it were the most natural thing in the world; and on her part,--such was the contagion of his simplicity,- miriam heard it without anger or disturbance, though with no responding emotion.it was as if they had strayed across the limits of arcadia; and come under a civil polity where young men might avow their passion with as little restraint as a bird pipes its note to a similar purpose.
"why should you love me, foolish boy?" said she."we have no points of sympathy at all.there are not two creatures more unlike, in this wide world, than you and i!""you are yourself, and i am donatello," replied he."therefore i love you! there needs no other reason."certainly, there was no better or more explicable reason.it might have been imagined that donatello's unsophisticated heart would be more readily attracted to a feminine nature of clear simplicity like his own, than to one already turbid with grief or wrong, as miriam's seemed to be.perhaps, on the other hand, his character needed the dark element, which it found in her.the force and energy of will, that sometimes flashed through her eyes, may have taken him captive; or, not improbably, the varying lights and shadows of her temper, now so mirthful, and anon so sad with mysterious gloom, had bewitched the youth.analyze the matter as we may, the reason assigned by donatello himself was as satisfactory as we are likely to attain.