doubt or fear.

The tinge of passion that had colored Beatrice's manner vanished;
she became gay, and appeared to derive a pure delight from her
communion with the youth not unlike what the maiden of a lonely
island might have felt conversing with a voyager from the
civilized world. Evidently her experience of life had been
confined within the limits of that garden. She talked now about
matters as simple as the daylight or summer clouds, and now asked
questions in reference to the city, or Giovanni's distant home,
his friends, his mother, and his sisters--questions indicating
such seclusion, and such lack of familiarity with modes and
forms, that Giovanni responded as if to an infant. Her spirit
gushed out before him like a fresh rill that was just catching
its first glimpse of the sunlight and wondering at the
reflections of earth and sky which were flung into its bosom.
There came thoughts, too, from a deep source, and fantasies of a
gemlike brilliancy, as if diamonds and rubies sparkled upward
among the bubbles of the fountain. Ever and anon there gleamed
across the young man's mind a sense of wonder that he should be
walking side by side with the being who had so wrought upon his
imagination, whom he had idealized in such hues of terror, in
whom he had positively witnessed such manifestations of dreadful
attributes,--that he should be conversing with Beatrice like a
brother, and should find her so human and so maidenlike. But such
reflections were only momentary; the effect of her character was
too real not to make itself familiar at once.

In this free intercourse they had strayed through the garden, and
now, after many turns among its avenues, were come to the