me now to pluck it as a memorial
of this interview."

He made a step towards the shrub with extended hand; but Beatrice
darted forward, uttering a shriek that went through his heart like a
dagger. She caught his hand and drew it back with the whole force of
her slender figure. Giovanni felt her touch thrilling through his
fibres.

"Touch it not!" exclaimed she, in a voice of agony. "Not for thy life!
It is fatal!"

Then, hiding her face, she fled from him and vanished beneath the
sculptured portal. As Giovanni followed her with his eyes, he beheld
the emaciated figure and pale intelligence of Dr. Rappaccini, who had
been watching the scene, he knew not how long, within the shadow of the
entrance.

No sooner was Guasconti alone in his chamber than the image of Beatrice
came back to his passionate musings, invested with all the witchery
that had been gathering around it ever since his first glimpse of her,
and now likewise imbued with a tender warmth of girlish womanhood. She
was human; her nature was endowed with all gentle and feminine
qualities; she was worthiest to be worshipped; she was capable, surely,
on her part, of the height and heroism of love. Those tokens which he
had hitherto considered as proofs of a frightful peculiarity in her
physical and moral system were now either forgotten, or, by the subtle
sophistry of passion transmitted into a golden crown of enchantment,
rendering Beatrice the more admirable by so much as she was the more
unique. Whatever had looked ugly was now beautiful; or, if incapable of
such a change, it stole away and hid itself among those shapeless half
ideas which throng the dim region beyond the daylight of our perfect
consciousness. Thus did he spend the night, nor fell asleep until the
dawn had begun to awake the slumbering flowers in Dr. Rappaccini's
garden, whither Giovanni's dreams doubtless led him. Up rose the sun in
his due season, and, flinging his beams upon the young man's eyelids,
awoke him to a sense of pain. When thoroughly aroused, he became
sensible of a burning and tingling agony in his hand--in his right
hand--the very hand which Beatrice had grasped in her own when he was
on the point of plucking one of the gemlike flowers. On the back of
that hand there was now a purple print like that of four small fingers,
and the likeness of a slender thumb upon his wrist.

Oh, how stubbornly does love,--or even that cunning semblance of love
which flourishes in the imag