"my sweet friend," she said, taking one of his passive hands in both of hers, "what can i say to comfort you?""nothing!" replied donatello, with sombre reserve."nothing will ever comfort me.""i accept my own misery," continued miriam, "my own guilt, if guilt it be; and, whether guilt or misery, i shall know how to deal with it.but you, dearest friend, that were the rarest creature in all this world, andseemed a being to whom sorrow could not cling,--you, whom i half fancied to belong to a race that had vanished forever, you only surviving, to mankind how genial and how joyous life used to be, in some long-gone age, --what had you to do with grief or crime?""they came to me as to other men," said donatello broodingly."doubtless i was born to them.""no, no; they came with me," replied miriam."mine is the responsibility! alas! wherefore was i born? why did we ever meet? why did i not drive you from me, knowing for my heart foreboded it--that the cloud in which i walked would likewise envelop you!"donatello stirred uneasily, with the irritable impatience that is often combined with a mood of leaden despondency.a brown lizard with two tails--a monster often engendered by the roman sunshine--ran across his foot, and made him start.then he sat silent awhile, and so did miriam, trying to dissolve her whole heart into sympathy, and lavish it all upon him, were it only for a moment's cordial.
the young man lifted his hand to his breast, and, unintentionally, as miriam's hand was within his, he lifted that along with it."i have a great weight here!" said he.the fancy struck miriam (but she drove it resolutely down) that donatello almost imperceptibly shuddered, while, in pressing his own hand against his heart, he pressed hers there too.