ceased its toil; the web vibrated with a tremor originating in
the body of the small artisan. Again Giovanni sent forth a
breath, deeper, longer, and imbued with a venomous feeling out of
his heart: he knew not whether he were wicked, or only desperate.
The spider made a convulsive gripe with his limbs and hung dead
across the window.

"Accursed! accursed!" muttered Giovanni, addressing himself.
"Hast thou grown so poisonous that this deadly insect perishes by
thy breath?"

At that moment a rich, sweet voice came floating up from the
garden

"Giovanni! Giovanni! It is past the hour! Why tarriest thou? Come
down!"

"Yes," muttered Giovanni again. "She is the only being whom my
breath may not slay! Would that it might!"

He rushed down, and in an instant was standing before the bright
and loving eyes of Beatrice. A moment ago his wrath and despair
had been so fierce that he could have desired nothing so much as
to wither her by a glance; but with her actual presence there
came influences which had too real an existence to be at once
shaken off: recollections of the delicate and benign power of her
feminine nature, which had so often enveloped him in a religious
calm; recollections of many a holy and passionate outgush of her
heart, when the pure fountain had been unsealed from its depths
and made visible in its transparency to his mental eye;