He had at first felt Corona's influence, and her face and voice seemed to awaken in him a memory, which was as yet but an anticipation, and not a real remembrance.

It was as the faint perfume of the spring wafted up to a prisoner in some stern fortress, as the first gentle sweetness that rose from the enchanted lakes of the cisalpine country to the nostrils of the war-hardened Goths as they descended the last snow-slopes in their southern wandering--an anticipation that seemed already a memory, a looking forward again to something that had been already loved in a former state.

Giovanni had laughed at himself for it at first, then he had dreaded its growing charm, and at the last he had fallen hopelessly under the spell, retaining only enough of his former self to make him determined that the harm which had come upon himself should not come near this woman whom he so adored.
And behold, at the first provocation, the very first time that by a careless word she had fired his blood and set his brain throbbing, he had not only been unable to hide what he felt, but had spoken such words as he would not have believed he could speak--so bluntly, so roughly, that she had almost fainted before his very eyes.
She must have been very angry, he thought.

Perhaps, too, she was frightened.

It was so rude, so utterly contrary to all that was chivalrous to say thus at the first opportunity, "I love you"-- just that and nothing more.