Fling me away, therefore! May you never need me more! But, if otherwise, a wish--almost an unuttered wish will bring me to you!" She stood a moment, expecting a reply.

But Donatello's eyes had again fallen on the ground, and he had not, in his bewildered mind and overburdened heart, a word to respond.
"That hour I speak of may never come," said Miriam.

"So farewell--farewell forever." "Farewell," said Donatello.
His voice hardly made its way through the environment of unaccustomed thoughts and emotions which had settled over him like a dense and dark cloud.

Not improbably, he beheld Miriam through so dim a medium that she looked visionary; heard her speak only in a thin, faint echo.
She turned from the young man, and, much as her heart yearned towards him, she would not profane that heavy parting by an embrace, or even a pressure of the hand.

So soon after the semblance of such mighty love, and after it had been the impulse to so terrible a deed, they parted, in all outward show, as coldly as people part whose whole mutual intercourse has been encircled within a single hour.
And Donatello, when Miriam had departed, stretched himself at full length on the stone bench, and drew his hat over his eyes, as the idle and light-hearted youths of dreamy Italy are accustomed to do, when they lie down in the first convenient shade, and snatch a noonday slumber.
A stupor was upon him, which he mistook for such drowsiness as he had known in his innocent past life.