ination, but strikes no depth of root into
the heart,--how stubbornly does it hold its faith until the moment
comes when it is doomed to vanish into thin mist! Giovanni wrapped a
handkerchief about his hand and wondered what evil thing had stung him,
and soon forgot his pain in a reverie of Beatrice.

After the first interview, a second was in the inevitable course of
what we call fate. A third; a fourth; and a meeting with Beatrice in
the garden was no longer an incident in Giovanni's daily life, but the
whole space in which he might be said to live; for the anticipation and
memory of that ecstatic hour made up the remainder. Nor was it
otherwise with the daughter of Rappaccini. She watched for the youth's
appearance, and flew to his side with confidence as unreserved as if
they had been playmates from early infancy--as if they were such
playmates still. If, by any unwonted chance, he failed to come at the
appointed moment, she stood beneath the window and sent up the rich
sweetness of her tones to float around him in his chamber and echo and
reverberate throughout his heart: "Giovanni! Giovanni! Why tarriest
thou? Come down!" And down he hastened into that Eden of poisonous
flowers.

But, with all this intimate familiarity, there was still a reserve in
Beatrice's demeanor, so rigidly and invariably sustained that the idea
of infringing it scarcely occurred to his imagination. By all
appreciable signs, they loved; they had looked love with eyes that
conveyed the holy secret from the depths of one soul into the depths of
the other, as if it were too sacred to be whispered by the way; they
had even spoken love in those gushes of passion when their spirits
darted forth in articulated breath like tongues of long-hidden flame;
and yet there had been no seal of lips, no clasp of hands, nor any
slightest caress such as love claims and hallows. He had never touched
one of the gleaming ringlets of her hair; her garment--so marked was
the physical barrier between them--had never been waved against him by
a breeze. On the few occasions when Giovanni had seemed tempted to
overstep the limit, Beatrice grew so sad, so stern, and withal wore
such a look of desolate separation, shuddering at itself, that not a
spoken word was requisite to repel him. At such times he was startled
at the horrible suspicions that rose, monster-like, out of the caverns
of his heart and stared him in the face; his love grew thin and faint
as the morning