Donatello said the truth; and we forebore to speak descriptively of
Miriam's beauty earlier in our narrative, because we foresaw this
occasion to bring it perhaps more forcibly before the reader.

We know not whether the portrait were a flattered likeness; probably
not, regarding it merely as the delineation of a lovely face; although
Miriam, like all self-painters, may have endowed herself with certain
graces which Other eyes might not discern. Artists are fond of painting
their own portraits; and, in Florence, there is a gallery of hundreds
of them, including the most illustrious, in all of which there are
autobiographical characteristics, so to speak,--traits, expressions,
loftinesses, and amenities, which would have been invisible, had they
not been painted from within. Yet their reality and truth are none
the less. Miriam, in like manner, had doubtless conveyed some of the
intimate results of her heart knowledge into her own portrait, and
perhaps wished to try whether they would be perceptible to so simple and
natural an observer as Donatello.

"Does the expression please you?" she asked.

"Yes," said Donatello hesitatingly; "if it would only smile so like the
sunshine as you sometimes do. No, it is sadder than I thought at first.
Cannot you make yourself smile a little, signorina?"

"A forced smile is uglier than a frown," said Miriam, a bright, natural
smile breaking out over her face even as she spoke.

"O, catch it now!" cried Donatello, clapping his hands. "Let it shine
upon the picture! There! it has vanished already! And you are sad again,
very sad; and the picture gazes sadly forth at me, as if some evil had