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