It was, at any rate, but a feeble and despairing kind of remonstrance which she had now the energy to oppose against his persecution.

“You follow me too closely,” she said, in low, faltering accents; “you allow me too scanty room to draw my breath.  Do you know what will be the end of this?” “I know well what must be the end,” he replied.

“Tell me, then,” said Miriam, “that I may compare your foreboding with my own.  Mine is a very dark one.”

“There can be but one result, and that soon,” answered the model.  “You must throw off your present mask and assume another.  You must vanish out of the scene:  quit Rome with me, and leave no trace whereby to follow you.  It is in my power, as you well know, to compel your acquiescence in my bidding.  You are aware of the penalty of a refusal.”

“Not that penalty with which you would terrify me,” said Miriam; “another there may be, but not so grievous.”  “What is that other?” he inquired.  “Death! simply death!” she answered.  “Death,” said her persecutor, “is not so simple and opportune a thing as you imagine.  You are strong and warm with life.  Sensitive and irritable as your spirit is, these many months of trouble, this latter thraldom in which I hold you, have scarcely made your cheek paler than I saw it in your girlhood.  Miriam,—­for I forbear to speak another name, at which these leaves would shiver above our heads,—­Miriam, you cannot die!”

“Might not a dagger find my heart?” said she, for the first time meeting his eyes.  “Would not poison make an end of me?  Will not the Tiber drown me?”

“It might,” he answered; “for I allow that you are mortal.  But, Miriam, believe me, it is not your fate to die while there remains so much to be sinned and suffered in the world.  We have a destiny which we must needs fulfil together.  I, too, have struggled to escape it.  I was as anxious as yourself to break the tie between us,—­to bury the past in a fathomless grave,—­to make it impossible that we should ever meet, until you confront me at the bar of Judgment!  You little can imagine what steps I took to render all this secure; and what was the result?  Our strange interview in the bowels of the earth convinced me of the futility of my design.”

“Ah, fatal chance!” cried Miriam, covering her face with her hands.

“Yes, your heart trembled with horror when you recognized me,” rejoined he; “but you did not guess that there was an equal horror in my own!”

“Why would not the weight of earth above our heads have crumbled down upon us both, forcing us apart, but burying us equally?” cried Miriam, in a burst of vehement passion.  “O, that we could have wandered in those dismal passages till we both perished, taking opposite paths in the darkness, so that when we lay down to die, our last breaths might not mingle!”

“It were vain to wish it,” said the model.  “In all that labyrinth of midnight paths, we should have found one another out to live or die together.  Our fates cross and are entangled.  The threads are twisted into a strong cord, which is dragging us to an evil doom.  Could the knots be severed, we might escape.  But neither can your slender fingers untie these knots, nor my masculine force break them.  We must submit!”