spell, which you have been exercising, and of which I have heard before,
though I never believed in, nor expected to witness it, I am satisfied
that you still possess it. It was my own half-concealed presence, no
doubt, and some involuntary little movement of mine, that scared away
your forest friends."

"They are friends of mine no longer," answered Donatello.

"We all of us, as we grow older," rejoined Kenyon, "lose somewhat of our
proximity to nature. It is the price we pay for experience."

"A heavy price, then!" said Donatello, rising from the ground. "But we
will speak no more of it. Forget this scene, my dear friend. In your
eyes, it must look very absurd. It is a grief, I presume, to all men, to
find the pleasant privileges and properties of early life departing from
them. That grief has now befallen me. Well; I shall waste no more tears
for such a cause!"

Nothing else made Kenyon so sensible of a change in Donatello, as his
newly acquired power of dealing with his own emotions, and, after a
struggle more or less fierce, thrusting them down into the prison cells
where he usually kept them confined. The restraint, which he now put
upon himself, and the mask of dull composure which he succeeded in
clasping over his still beautiful, and once faun-like face, affected the
sensitive sculptor more sadly than even the unrestrained passion of the
preceding scene. It is a very miserable epoch, when the evil necessities
of life, in our tortuous world, first get the better of us so far as to
compel us to attempt throwing a cloud over our transparency. Simplicity
increases in value the longer we can keep it, and the further we carry
it onward into life; the loss of a child's simplicity, in the inevitable