Septimius relented not, though it was only Rose's cheek that he succeeded
in touching. In truth, except for that first one, at the moment of their
plighted troths, I doubt whether Septimius ever touched those soft, sweet
lips, where the smiles dwelt and the little pouts. He now returned to his
study, and questioned with himself whether he should touch that weary,
ugly, yellow, blurred, unintelligible, bewitched, mysterious,
bullet-penetrated, blood-stained manuscript again. There was an
undefinable reluctance to do so, and at the same time an enticement
(irresistible, as it proved) drawing him towards it. He yielded, and
taking it from his desk, in which the precious, fatal treasure was locked
up, he plunged into it again, and this time with a certain degree of
success. He found the line which had before gleamed out, and vanished
again, and which now started out in strong relief; even as when sometimes
we see a certain arrangement of stars in the heavens, and again lose it,
by not seeing its individual stars in the same relation as before; even
so, looking at the manuscript in a different way, Septimius saw this
fragment of a sentence, and saw, moreover, what was necessary to give it a
certain meaning. "Set the root in a grave, and wait for what shall
blossom. It will be very rich, and full of juice." This was the purport,
he now felt sure, of the sentence he had lighted upon; and he took it to
refer to the mode of producing something that was essential to the thing
to be concocted. It might have only a moral being; or, as is generally the
case, the moral and physical truth went hand in hand.

While Septimius was busying himself in this way, the summer advanced, and
with it there appeared a new character, making her way into our pages.
This was a slender and pale girl, whom Septimius was once startled to
find, when he ascended his hill-top, to take his walk to and fro upon the
accustomed path, which he had now worn deep.