She listened wearily, and her head ached more and more, so that she longed for the coolness of her own room and for Nella's soothing chatter, to which she was so much accustomed that she missed it if the little brown woman chanced to be silent.

The sun went down and wax candles were brought, instead of the tall oil lamps that were used on ordinary days. It grew hotter and hotter, the compliments of the ladies seemed more and more dull and stale, her mantle was heavy and even the gold circlet on her hair was a burden. Worse than all, she knew that every minute was carrying her further and further into the dominion of the irrevocable whence she could never return.

She had looked at the palaces she had passed in Venice that morning, some in shadow, some in sunlight, some with gay faces and some grave, but all so different from the big old house in Murano, that she did not wish to live in them at all. It would have been much easier to submit if she had been betrothed to a foreigner, a Roman, or a Florentine. She had been told that Romans were all wicked and gloomy, and that Florentines were all wicked and gay. That was what Nella had heard. But in a sense they were free, for they probably did what was good in their own eyes, as wicked people often do. Life in Venice was to be lived by rule, and everything that tasted of freedom was repressed by law. If it pleased women to wear long trains the Council forbade them; if they took refuge in long sleeves, thrown back over their shoulders, a law was passed which set a measure and a pattern for all sleeves that might ever be worn. If a few rich men indulged their fancy in the decoration of their gondolas, now that riding was out of fashion, the Council immediately determined that gondolas should be black and that they should only be gilt and adorned inside. As for freedom, if any one talked of it he was immediately tortured until he retracted all his errors, and was then promptly beheaded for fear that he should fall again into the same mistake. Nella said so, and told hideous tales of the things that had been done to innocent men in the little room behind the Council chamber in the Palace. Besides, if one talked of justice, there was Zorzi's case to prove that there was no justice at all in Venetian law. Marietta suddenly wished that she were wicked, like the Romans and the Florentines; and even when she reflected that it was a sin to wish that one were bad, she was not properly repentant, because she had a very vague notion of what wickedness really was. Righteousness seemed just now to consist in being smothered in heavy clothes, in a horribly hot room, while respectable women of all ages, fat, thin, fair, red-haired, dark, ugly and handsome, all chattered at her and overwhelmed her with nauseous flattery.

She thought of that morning in the garden, three days ago, when something she did not understand had been so near, just before disappearing for ever. Then her throat tightened and she saw indistinctly, and her lips were suddenly dry. After that, she remembered little of what happened on that evening, and by and by she was alone in her own room without a light, standing at the open window with bare feet on the cold pavement, and the night breeze stirred her hair and brought her the scent of the rosemary and lavender, while she tried to listen to the stars, as if they were speaking to her, and lost herself in her thoughts for a few moments before going to sleep.

Zorzi was still sitting in the big chair against the wall when he heard a footstep in the garden, and as he rose to look out Beroviero entered. The master was wrapped in a long cloak that covered something which he was carrying. There was no lamp in the laboratory, but the three fierce eyes of the furnace shed a low red glare in different directions. Beroviero had given orders that the night boys should not come until he sent for them.

"I thought it wiser to bring this over at night," he said, setting a small iron box on the table.

It contained the secrets of Paolo Godi, which were worth a great fortune in those times.

"Of all my possessions," said the old man, laying his hands upon the casket, "these are the most valuable. I will not hide them alone, as I might, because if any harm befell me they would be lost, and might be found by some unworthy person."

"Could you not leave them with some one else, sir?" asked Zorzi.

"No. I trust no one else. Let us hide them together to-night, for to-morrow I must leave Venice. Take up one of the large flagstones behind the annealing oven, and dig a hole underneath it in the ground. The place will be quite dry, from the heat of the oven."

Zorzi lit a lamp with a splinter of wood which he thrust into the 'bocca' of the furnace; he took a small crowbar from the corner and set to work. The laboratory contained all sorts of builder's tools, used when the furnace needed repairing. He raised one of the slabs with difficulty, turned it over, propped it with a billet of beech wood, and began to scoop out a hole in the hard earth, using a mason's trowel. Beroviero watched him, holding the box in his hands.

"The lock is not very good," he said, "but I thought the box might keep the packet from dampness."

"Is the packet properly sealed?" asked Zorzi, looking up.

"You shall see," answered the master, and he set down the box beside the lamp, on the broad stone at the mouth of the annealing oven. "It is better that you should see for yourself."

He unlocked the box and took out what seemed to be a small book, carefully tied up in a sheet of parchment. The ends of the silk cord below the knot were pinched in a broad red seal. Zorzi examined the wax.

"You sealed it with a glass seal," he observed. "It would not be hard to make another."

"Do you think it would be so easy?" asked Beroviero, who had made the seal himself many years ago.

Zorzi held the impression nearer to the lamp and scrutinised it closely.

"No one will have a chance to try," he said, with a slight gesture of indifference. "It might not be so easy."

The old man looked at him a moment, as if hesitating, and then put the packet back into the box and locked the latter with the key that hung from his neck by a small silver chain.

"I trust you," he said, and he gave the box to Zorzi, to be deposited in the hole.

Zorzi stood up, and taking a little tow from the supply used for cleaning the blow-pipes, he dipped it into the oil of the lamp and proceeded to grease the box carefully before hiding it.

"It would rust," he explained.

He laid the box in the hole and covered it with earth before placing the stone over it.

"Be careful to make the stone lie quite flat," said Angelo, bending down and gathering his gown off the floor in a bunch at his knees. "If it does not lie flat, the stone will move when the boys tread on it, and they may think of taking it up."

"It is very heavy," answered the young man. "It was as much as I could do to heave it up. You need not be afraid of the boys."

"It is not a very safe place, I fear, after all," returned Beroviero doubtfully. "Be sure to leave no marks of the crowbar, and no loose earth near it."

The heavy slab slipped into its bed with a soft thud. Zorzi took the lamp and examined the edges. One of them was a little chipped by the crowbar, and he rubbed it with the greasy tow and scattered dust over it. Then he got a cypress broom and swept the earth carefully away into a heap. Beroviero himself brought the shovel and held it close to the stones while Zorzi pushed the loose earth upon it.

"Carry it out and scatter it in the garden," said the old man.

It was the first time that he had allowed his affection for Zorzi to express itself so strongly, for he was generally a very cautious person. He took the young man's hand and held it a moment, pressing it kindly.

"It was not I who made the law against strangers, and it was not meant for men like you," he added.

Zorzi knew how much this meant from such a master and he would have found words for thanks, had he been able; but when he tried, they would not come.

"You may trust me," was all he could say.

Beroviero left him, and went down the dark corridor with the firm step of a man who knows his way without light.

In the morning, when he left the house to begin his journey, Zorzi stood by the steps with the servant to steady the gondola for him. His horses were to be in waiting in Venice, whence he was to go over to the mainland. He nodded to the young man carelessly, but said nothing, and no one would have guessed how kindly he had spoken to him on the previous night. Giovanni Beroviero took ceremonious leave of his father, his cap in his hand, bending low, a lean man, twenty years older than Marietta, with an insignificant brow and clean-shaven, pointed jaw and greedy lips. Marietta stood within the shadow of the doorway, very pale. Nella was beside her, and Giovanni's wife, and further in, at a respectful distance, the serving-people, for the master's departure was an event of importance.

The gondola pushed off when Beroviero had disappeared under the 'felse' with a final wave of the hand. Zorzi stood still, looking after his master, and Marietta came forward to the doorstep and pretended to watch the gondola also. Zorzi was the first to turn, and their eyes met. He had not expected to see her still there, and he started a little. Giovanni looked at him coldly.

"You had better go to your work," he said in a sour tone. "I suppose my father has told you what to do."

The young artist flushed, but answered quietly enough.

"I am going to my work," he said. "I need no urging."

Before he put on his cap, he bent his head to Marietta; then he passed on towards the bridge.

"That fellow is growing insolent," said Giovanni to his sister, but he was careful that Zorzi should not hear the words. "I think I shall advise our father to turn him out."

Marietta looked at her brother with something like contempt.

"Since when has our father consulted you, or taken your advice?" she asked.

"I presume he takes yours," retorted Giovanni, regretting that he could not instantly find a sharper answer, for he was not quick-witted though he was suspicious.

"He needs neither yours nor mine," said Marietta, "and he trusts whom he pleases."

"You seem inclined to defend his servants when they are insolent," answered Giovanni.

"For that matter, Zorzi is quite able to defend himself!" She turned her back on her brother and went towards the stairs, taking Nella with her.

Giovanni glanced at her with annoyance and walked along the footway in the direction of his own glass-house, glad to go back to a place where he was absolute despot. But he had been really surprised that Marietta should boldly take the Dalmatian's side against him, and his narrow brain brooded upon the unexpected circumstance. Besides the dislike he felt for the young artist, his small pride resented the thought that his sister, who was to marry a Contarini, should condescend to the defence of a servant.

Zorzi went his way calmly and spent the day in the laboratory. He was in a frame of mind in which such speeches as Giovanni's could make but little impression upon him, sensitive though he naturally was. Really great sorrows, or great joys or great emotions, make smaller ones almost impossible for the time. Men of vast ambition, whose deeds are already moving the world and making history, are sometimes as easily annoyed by trifles as a nervous woman; but he who knows that what is dearest to him is slipping from his hold, or has just been taken, is half paralysed in his sense of outward things. His own mind alone has power to give him a momentary relief.

Herein lies one of the strongest problems of human nature. We say with assurance that the mind rules the body, we feel that the spirit in some way overshadows and includes the mind. Yet if this were really true the spirit—that is, the will—should have power against bodily pain, but not against moral suffering except with some help from a higher source. But it is otherwise. If the will of ordinary human beings could hypnotise the body against material sensation, the credit due to those brave believers in all ages who have suffered cruel torments for their faith would be singularly diminished. If the mind could dominate matter by ordinary concentration of thought, a bad toothache should have no effect upon the delicate imagination of the poet, and Napoleon would not have lost the decisive battle of his life by a fit of indigestion, as has been asserted.

On the other hand, there was never yet a man of genius, or even of great talent, who was not aware that the most acute moral anguish can be momentarily forgotten, as if it did not exist for the time, by concentrating the mind upon its accustomed and favourite kind of work. Johnson wrote Rasselas to pay for the funeral of his yet unburied mother, and Johnson was a man of heart if ever one lived; he could not have written the book if he had had a headache. Saints and ascetics without end and of many persuasions have resorted to bodily pain as a means of deadening the imagination and exalting the will or spirit. Some great thinkers have been invalids, but in every case their food, work has been done when they were temporarily free from pain. Perhaps the truth is on the side of those mystics who say that although the mind is of a higher nature than matter, it is so closely involved with it that neither can get away from the other, and that both together tend to shut out the spirit and to forget its existence, which is a perpetual reproach to them; and any ordinary intellectual effort being produced by the joint activity of mind and the matter through which the mind acts, the condition of the spirit at the time has little or no effect upon them, nor upon what they are doing. And if one would carry the little theory further, one might find that the greatest works of genius have been produced when the effort of mind and matter has taken place under the inspiration of the spirit, so that all three were momentarily involved together. But such thoughts lead far, and it may be that they profit little. The best which a man means to do is generally better than the best he does, and it is perhaps the best he is capable of doing.

Be these things as they may, Zorzi worked hard in the laboratory, minutely carrying out the instructions he had received, but reasoning upon them with a freshness and keenness of thought of which his master was no longer capable. When he had made the trials and had added the new ingredients for future ones, he began to think out methods of his own which had suggested themselves to him of late, but which he had never been able to try. But though he had the furnace to himself, to use as long as he could endure the heat of the advancing summer, he was face to face with a difficulty that seemed insuperable.

The furnace had but three crucibles, each of which contained one of the mixtures by means of which he and Beroviero were trying to produce the famous red glass. In order to begin to make glass in his own way, it was necessary that one of the three should be emptied, but unless he disobeyed his orders this was out of the question. In his train of thought and longing to try what he felt sure must succeed, he had forgotten the obstacle. The check brought him back to himself, and he walked disconsolately up and down the long room by the side of the furnace.

Everything was against him, said the melancholy little demon that torments genius on dark days. It was not enough that he should be forced by every consideration of honour and wisdom to hide his love for his master's daughter; when he took refuge in his art and tried to throw his whole life into it, he was stopped at the outset by the most impassable barriers of impossibility. The furious desire to create, which is the strength as well as the essence of genius, surged up and dashed itself to futile spray upon the face of the solid rock.

He stood still before the hanging shelves on which he had placed the objects he had occasionally made, and which his master allowed him to keep there—light, air-thin vessels of graceful shapes: an ampulla of exquisite outline with a long curved spout that bent upwards and then outwards and over like the stalk of a lily of the valley; a large drinking-glass set on a stem so slender that one would doubt its strength to carry the weight of a full measure, yet so strong that the cup might have been filled with lead without breaking it; a broad dish that was nothing but a shadow against the light, but in the shadow was a fair design of flowers, drawn free with a diamond point; there were a dozen of such things on the shelves, not the best that Zorzi had made, for those Beroviero took to his own house and used on great occasions, while these were the results of experiments unheard of in those days, and which not long afterwards made a school.

In his present frame of mind Zorzi felt a foolish impulse to take them down and smash them one by one in the big jar into which the failures were thrown, to be melted again in the main furnace, for in a glass-house nothing is thrown away. He knew it was foolish, and he held his hands behind him as he looked at the things, wishing that he had never made them, that he had never learned the art he was forbidden by law to practise, that he had never left Dalmatia as a little boy long ago, that he had never been born.

The door opened suddenly and Giovanni entered. Zorzi turned and looked at him in silence. He was surprised, but he supposed that the master's son had a right to come if he chose, though he never showed himself in the glass-house when his father was in Murano.

"Are you alone here?" asked Giovanni, looking about him. "Do none of the workmen come here?"

"The master has left me in charge of his work," answered Zorzi. "I need no help."

Giovanni seated himself in his father's chair and looked at the table before the window.

"It is not very hard work, I fancy," he observed, crossing one leg over the other and pulling up his black hose to make it fit his lean calf better.

Zorzi suspected at once that he had come in search of information, and paused before answering.

"The work needs careful attention," he said at last.

"Most glass-work does," observed Giovanni, with a harsh little laugh. "Are you very attentive, then? Do you remember to do all that my father told you?"

"The master only left this morning. So far, I have obeyed his orders."

"I do not understand how a man who is not a glass-blower can know enough to be left alone in charge of a furnace," said Giovanni, looking at Zorzi's profile.

This time Zorzi was silent. He did not think it necessary to tell how much he knew.

"I suppose my father knows what he is about," continued Giovanni, in a tone of disapproval.

Zorzi thought so too, and no reply seemed necessary. He stood still, looking out of the window, and wishing that his visitor would go away. But Giovanni had no such intention.

"What are you making?" he asked presently.

"A certain kind of glass," Zorzi answered.

"A new colour?"

"A certain colour. That is all I can tell you."

"You can tell me what colour it is," said Giovanni. "Why are you so secret? Even if my father had ordered you to be silent with me about his work, which I do not believe, you would not be betraying anything by telling me that. What colour is he trying to make?"

"I am to say nothing about it, not even to you. I obey my orders."

Giovanni was a glass-maker himself. He rose with an air of annoyance and crossed the laboratory to the jar in which the broken glass was kept, took out a piece and held it up against the light. Zorzi had made a movement as if to hinder him, but he realised at once that he could not lay hands on his master's son. Giovanni laughed contemptuously and threw the fragment back into the jar.

"Is that all? I can do better than that myself!" he said, and he sat down again in the big chair.

His eyes fell on the shelves upon which Zorzi's specimens of work were arranged. He looked at them with interest, at once understanding their commercial value.

"My father can make good things when he is not wasting time over discoveries," he remarked, and rising again he went nearer and began to examine the little objects.

Zorzi said nothing, and after looking at them a long time Giovanni turned away and stood before the furnace. The copper ladle with which the specimens were taken from the pots lay on the brick ledge near one of the 'boccas.' Giovanni took it, looked round to see where the iron plate for testing was placed, and thrust the ladle into the aperture, holding it lightly lest the heat should hurt his hand.

"You shall not do that!" cried Zorzi, who was already beside him.

Before Giovanni knew what was happening Zorzi had struck the ladle from his hand, and it disappeared through the 'bocca' into the white-hot glass within.



CHAPTER IX

With an oath Giovanni raised his hand to strike Zorzi in the face, but the quick Dalmatian snatched up his heavy blow-pipe in both hands and stood in an attitude of defence.

"If you try to strike me, I shall defend myself," he said quietly.

Giovanni's sour face turned grey with fright, and then as his impotent anger rose, the grey took an almost greenish hue that was bad to see. He smiled in a sickly fashion. Zorzi set the blow-pipe upright against the furnace and watched him, for he saw that the man was afraid of him and might act treacherously.

"You need not be so violent," said Giovanni, and his voice trembled a little, as he recovered himself. "After all, my father would not have made any objection to my trying the glass. If I had, I could not have guessed how it was made."

Zorzi did not answer, for he had discovered that silence was his best weapon. Giovanni continued, in the peevish tone of a man who has been badly frightened and is ashamed of it.

"It only shows how ignorant you are of glass-making, if you suppose that my father would care." As he still got no reply beyond a shrug of the shoulders, he changed the subject. "Did you see my father make any of those things?" he asked, pointing to the shelves.

"No," answered Zorzi.

"But he made them all here, did he not?" insisted Giovanni. "And you are always with him."

"He did not make any of them."

Giovanni opened his eyes in astonishment. In his estimation there was no man living, except his father, who could have done such work. Zorzi smiled, for he knew what the other's astonishment meant.

"I made them all," he said, unable to resist the temptation to take the credit that was justly his.

"You made those things?" repeated Giovanni incredulously.

But Zorzi was not in the least offended by his disbelief. The more sceptical Giovanni was, the greater the honour in having produced anything so rarely beautiful.

"I made those, and many others which the master keeps in his house," he said.

Giovanni would have liked to give him the lie, but he dared not just then.

"If you made them, you could make something of the kind again," he said. "I should like to see that. Take your blow-pipe and try. Then I shall believe you."

"There is no white glass in the furnace," answered Zorzi. "If there were, I would show you what I can do."

Giovanni laughed sourly.

"I thought you would find some good excuse," he said.

"The master saw me do the work," answered Zorzi unconcernedly. "Ask him about it when he comes back."

"There are other furnaces in the glass-house," suggested Giovanni. "Why not bring your blow-pipe with you and show the workmen as well as me what you can do?"

Zorzi hesitated. It suddenly occurred to him that this might be a decisive moment in his life, in which the future would depend on the decision he made. In all the years since he had been with Beroviero he had never worked at one of the great furnaces among the other men.

"I daresay your sense of responsibility is so great that you do not like to leave the laboratory, even for half an hour," said Giovanni scornfully. "But you have to go home at night."

"I sleep here," answered Zorzi.

"Indeed?" Giovanni was surprised. "I see that your objections are insuperable," he added with a laugh.

Zorzi was in one of those moods in which a man feels that he has nothing to lose. There might, however, be something to gain by exhibiting his skill before Giovanni and the men. His reputation as a glass-maker would be made in half an hour.

"Since you do not believe me, come," he said at last. "You shall see for yourself."

He took his blow-pipe and thrust it through one of the 'boccas' to melt off the little red glass that adhered to it. Then he cooled it in water, and carefully removed the small particles that stuck to the iron here and there like spots of glazing.

"I am ready," he said, when he had finished.

Giovanni rose and led the way, without a word. Zorzi followed him, shut the door, turned the key twice and thrust it into the bosom of his doublet. Giovanni turned and watched him.

"You are really very cautions," he said. "Do you always lock the door when you go out?"

"Always," answered Zorzi, shouldering his blow-pipe.

They crossed the little garden and entered the passage that led to the main furnace rooms. In the first they entered, eight or ten men and youths, masters and apprentices, were at work. The place was higher and far more spacious than the laboratory, the furnace was broader and taller and had four mouths instead of three. The sunlight streamed through a window high above the floor and fell upon the arched back of the annealing oven, the window being so placed that the sun could never shine upon the working end and dazzle the workmen.

When Giovanni and Zorzi entered, the men were working in silence. The low and steady roar of the flames was varied by the occasional sharp click of iron or the soft sound of hot glass rolling on the marver, or by the hiss of a metal instrument plunged into water to cool it. Every man had an apprentice to help him, and two boys tended the fire. The foreman sat at a table, busy with an account, a small man, even paler than the others and dressed in shabby brown hose and a loose brown coat. The workmen wore only hose and shirts.

Without desisting from their occupations they cast surprised glances at Giovanni and his companion, whom they all hated as a favoured person. One of them was finishing a drinking-glass, rolling the pontil on the arms of the working-stool; another, a beetle-browed fellow, swung his long blow-pipe with its lump of glowing glass in a full circle, high in air and almost to touch the ground; another was at a 'bocca' in the low glare; all were busy, and the air was very hot and close. The men looked grim and ill-tempered.

Giovanni explained the object of his coming in a way intended to conciliate them to himself at Zorzi's expense. Their presence gave him courage.

"This is Zorzi, the man without a name," he said, "who is come from Dalmatia to give us a lesson in glass-blowing."

One of the men laughed, and the apprentices tittered. The others looked as if they did not understand. Zorzi had known well enough what humour he should find among them, but he would not let the taunt go unanswered.

"Sirs," he said, for they all claimed the nobility of the glass-blowers' caste, "I come not to teach you, but to prove to the master's son that I can make some trifle in the manner of your art."

No one spoke. The workmen in the elder Beroviero's house knew well enough that Zorzi was a better artist than they, and they had no mind to let him outdo them at their own furnace.

"Will any one of you gentlemen allow me to use his place?" asked Zorzi civilly.

Not a man answered. In the sullen silence the busy hands moved with quick skill, the furnace roared, the glowing glass grew in ever-changing shapes.

"One of you must give Zorzi his place," said Giovanni, in a tone of authority.

The little foreman turned quite round in his chair and looked on. There was no reply. The pale men went on with their work as if Giovanni were not there, and Zorzi leaned calmly on his blow-pipe. Giovanni moved a step forward and spoke directly to one of the men who had just dropped a finished glass into the bed of soft wood ashes, to be taken to the annealing oven.

"Stop working for a while," he said. "Let Zorzi have your place."

"The foreman gives orders here, not you," answered the man coolly, and he prepared to begin another piece.

Giovanni was very angry, but there were too many of the workmen, and he did not say what rose to his lips, but crossed over to the foreman. Zorzi kept his place, waiting to see what might happen.

"Will you be so good as to order one of the men to give up his place?" Giovanni asked.

The old foreman smiled at this humble acknowledgment of his authority, but he argued the point before acceding.

"The men know well enough what Zorzi can do," he answered in a low voice. "They dislike him, because he is not one of us. I advise you to take him to your own glass-house, sir, if you wish to see him work. You will only make trouble here."

"I am not afraid of any trouble, I tell you," replied Giovanni. "Please do what I ask."

"Very well. I will, but I take no responsibility before the master if there is a disturbance. The men are in a bad humour and the weather is hot."

"I will be responsible to my father," said Giovanni.

"Very well," repeated the old man. "You are a glass-maker yourself, like the rest of us. You know how we look upon foreigners who steal their knowledge of our art."

"I wish to make sure that he has really stolen something of it."

The foreman laughed outright.

"You will be convinced soon enough!" he said. "Give your place to the foreigner, Piero," he added, speaking to the man who had refused to move at Giovanni's bidding.

Piero at once chilled the fresh lump of glass he had begun to fashion and smashed it off the tube into the refuse jar. Without a word Zorzi took his place. While he warmed the end of his blow-pipe at the 'bocca' he looked to right and left to see where the working-stool and marver were placed, and to be sure that the few tools he needed were at hand, the pontil, the 'procello,'—that is, the small elastic tongs for modelling—and the shears. Piero's apprentice had retired to a distance, as he had received no special orders, and the workmen hoped that Zorzi would find himself in difficulty at the moment when he would turn in the expectation of finding the assistant at his elbow. But Zorzi was used to helping himself. He pushed his blow-pipe into the melted glass and drew it out, let it cool a moment and then thrust it in again to take up more of the stuff.

The men went on with their work, seeming to pay no attention to him, and Piero turned his back and talked to the foreman in low tones. Only Giovanni watched, standing far enough back to be out of reach of the long blow-pipe if Zorzi should unexpectedly swing it to its full length. Zorzi was confident and unconcerned, though he was fully aware that the men were watching every movement he made, while pretending not to see. He knew also that owing to his being partly self-taught he did certain things in ways of his own. They should see that his ways were as good as theirs, and what was more, that he needed no help, while none of them could do anything without an apprentice.

The glass grew and swelled, lengthened and contracted with his breath and under his touch, and the men, furtively watching him, were amazed to see how much he could do while the piece was still on the blow-pipe. But when he could do no more they thought that he would have trouble. He did not even turn his head to see whether any one was near to help him. At the exact moment when the work was cool enough to stand he attached the pontil with its drop of liquid glass to the lower end, as he had done many a time in the laboratory, and before those who looked on could fully understand how he had done it without assistance, the long and heavy blow-pipe lay on the floor and Zorzi held his piece on the lighter pontil, heating it again at the fire.

The men did not stop working, but they glanced at each other and nodded, when Zorzi could not see them. Giovanni uttered a low exclamation of surprise. The foreman alone now watched Zorzi with genuine admiration; there was no mistaking the jealous attitude of the others. It was not the mean envy of the inferior artist, either, for they were men who, in their way, loved art as Beroviero himself did, and if Zorzi had been a new companion recently promoted from the state of apprenticeship in the guild, they would have looked on in wonder and delight, even if, at the very beginning, he outdid them all. What they felt was quite different. It was the deep, fierce hatred of the mediaeval guildsman for the stranger who had stolen knowledge without apprenticeship and without citizenship, and it was made more intense because the glass-blowers were the only guild that excluded every foreign-born man, without any exception. It was a shame to them to be outdone by one who had not their blood, nor their teaching, nor their high acknowledged rights.

They were peaceable men in their way, not given to quarrelling, nor vicious; yet, excepting the mild old foreman, there was not one of them who would not gladly have brought his iron blow-pipe down on Zorzi's head with a two-handed swing, to strike the life out of the intruder.

Zorzi's deft hands made the large piece he was forming spin on itself and take new shape at every turn, until it had the perfect curve of those slim-necked Eastern vessels for pouring water upon the hands, which have not even now quite degenerated from their early grace of form. While it was still very hot, he took a sharp pointed knife from his belt and with a turn of his hand cut a small round hole, low down on one side. The mouth was widened and then turned in and out like the leaf of a carnation. He left the cooling piece on the pontil, lying across the arms of the stool, and took his blow-pipe again.

"Has the fellow not finished his tricks yet?" asked Piero discontentedly.

It would have given him pleasure to smash the beautiful thing to atoms where it lay, almost within his reach. Zorzi began to make the spout, for it was a large ampulla that he was fashioning. He drew the glass out, widened it, narrowed it, cut it, bent it and finished off the nozzle before he touched it with wet iron and made it drop into the ashes. A moment later he had heated the thick end of it again and was welding it over the hole he had made in the body of the vessel.

"The man has three hands!" exclaimed the foreman.

"And two of them are for stealing," added Piero.

"Or all three," put in the beetle-browed man who was working next to Zorzi.

Zorzi looked at him coldly a moment, but said nothing. They did not mean that he was a thief, except in the sense that he had stolen his knowledge of their art. He went on to make the handle of the ampulla, an easy matter compared with making the spout. But the highest part of glass-blowing lies in shaping graceful curves, and it is often in the smallest differences of measurement that the pieces made by Beroviero and Zorzi—preserved intact to this day—differ from similar things made by lesser artists. Yet in those little variations lies all the great secret that divides grace from awkwardness. Zorzi now had the whole vessel, with its spout and handle, on the pontil. It was finished, but he could still ornament it. His own instinct was to let it alone, leaving its perfect shape and airy lightness to be its only beauty, and he turned it thoughtfully as he looked at it, hesitating whether he should detach it from the iron, or do more.

"If you have finished your nonsense, let me come back to my work," said Piero behind him.

Zorzi did not turn to answer, for he had decided to add some delicate ornaments, merely to show Giovanni that he was a full master of the art. The dark-browed man had just collected a heavy lump of glass on the end of his blow-pipe, and was blowing into it before giving it the first swing that would lengthen it out. He and Piero exchanged glances, unnoticed by Zorzi, who had become almost unconscious of their hostile presence. He began to take little drops of glass from the furnace on the end of a thin iron, and he drew them out into thick threads and heated them again and laid them on the body of the ampulla, twisting and turning each bit till he had no more, and forming a regular raised design on the surface. His neighbour seemed to get no further with what he was doing, though he busily heated and reheated his lump of glass and again and again swung his blow-pipe round his head, and backward and forward. The foreman was too much interested in Zorzi to notice what the others were doing.

Zorzi was putting the last touches to his work. In a moment it would be finished and ready to go to the annealing oven, though he was even then reflecting that the workmen would certainly break it up as soon as the foreman turned his back. The man next to him swung his blow-pipe again, loaded with red-hot glass.

It slipped from his hand, and the hot mass, with the full weight of the heavy iron behind it, landed on Zorzi's right foot, three paces away, with frightful force. He uttered a sharp cry of surprise and pain. The lovely vessel he had made flew from his hands and broke into a thousand tiny fragments. In excruciating agony he lifted the injured foot from the ground and stood upon the other. Not a hand was stretched out to help him, and he felt that he was growing dizzy. He made a frantic effort to hop on one leg towards the furnace, so as to lean against the brickwork. Piero laughed.

"He is a dancer!" he cried. "He is a 'ballarino'!" The others all laughed, too, and the name remained his as long as he lived—he was Zorzi Ballarin.

The old foreman came to help him, seeing that he was really injured, for no one had quite realised it at first. Savagely as they hated him, the workmen would not have tortured him, though they might have killed him outright if they had dared. Excepting Piero and the man who had hurt him, the workmen all went on with their work.

He was ghastly pale, and great drops of sweat rolled down his forehead as he reached the foreman's chair and sat down: but after the first cry he had uttered, he made no sound. The foreman could hear how his teeth ground upon each other as he mastered the frightful suffering. Giovanni came, and stood looking at the helpless foot, smashed by the weight that had fallen upon it and burned to the bone in an instant by the molten glass.

"I cannot walk," he said at last to the foreman. "Will you help me?"

His voice was steady but weak. The foreman and Giovanni helped him to stand on his left foot, and putting his arms round their necks he swung himself along as he could. The dark man had picked up his blow-pipe and was at work again.

"You will pay for that when the master comes back," Piero said to him as Zorzi passed. "You will starve if you are not careful."

Zorzi turned his head and looked the dark man full in the eyes.

"It was an accident," he said faintly. "You did not mean to do it."

The man looked away shamefacedly, for he knew that even if he had not meant to injure Zorzi for life, he had meant to hurt him if he could.

As for Giovanni, he was puzzled by all that had happened so unexpectedly, for he was a dull man, though very keen for gain, and he did not understand human nature. He disliked Zorzi, but during the morning he had become convinced that the gifted young artist was a valuable piece of property, and not, as he had supposed, a clever flatterer who had wormed himself into old Beroviero's confidence. A man who could make such things was worth much money to his master. There were kings and princes, from the Pope to the Emperor, who would have given a round sum in gold for the beautiful ampulla of which only a heap of tiny fragments were now left to be swept away.

The two men brought Zorzi across the garden to the door of the laboratory. Leaning heavily on the foreman he got the key out, and Giovanni turned it in the lock. They would have taken him to the small inner room, to lay him on his pallet bed, but he would not go.

"The bench," he managed to say, indicating it with a nod of his head.

There was an old leathern pillow in the big chair. The foreman took it and placed it under Zorzi's head.

"We must get a surgeon to dress his wound," said the foreman.

"I will send for one," answered Giovanni. "Is there anything you want now?" he asked, with an attempt to speak kindly to the valuable piece of property that lay helpless before him.

"Water," said Zorzi very faintly. "And feed the fire—it must be time."

The foreman dipped a cupful of water from an earthen jar, held up his head and helped him to drink. Giovanni pushed some wood into the furnace.

"I will send for a surgeon," he repeated, and went out.

Zorzi closed his eyes, and the foreman stood looking at him.

"Do not stay here," Zorzi said. "You can do nothing for me, and the surgeon will come presently."

Then the foreman also left him, and he was alone. It was not in his nature to give way to bodily pain, but he was glad the men were gone, for he could not have borne much more in silence. He turned his head to the wall and bit the edge of the leathern cushion. Now and then his whole body shook convulsively.

He did not hear the door open again, for the torturing pain that shot through him dulled all his other senses. He wished that he might faint away, even for a moment, but his nerves were too sound for that. He was recalled to outer things by feeling a hand laid gently on his leg, and immediately afterwards he heard a man's voice, in a quietly gruff tone that scarcely rose or fell, reciting a whole litany of the most appalling blasphemies that ever fell from human lips. For an instant, in his suffering, Zorzi fancied that he had died and was in the clutches of Satan himself.

He turned his head on the cushion and saw the ugly face of the old porter, who was bending down and examining the wounded foot while he steadily cursed everything in heaven and earth, with an earnestness that would have been grotesque had his language been less frightful. For a few moments Zorzi almost forgot that he was hurt, as he listened. Not a saint in the calendar seemed likely to escape the porter's fury, and he even went to the length of cursing the relatives, male and female, of half-legendary martyrs and other good persons about whose families he could not possibly know anything.

"For heaven's sake, Pasquale!" cried Zorzi. "You will certainly be struck by lightning!"

He had always supposed that the porter hated him, as every one else did, and he could not understand. By this time he was far more helpless than he had been just after he had been hurt, and when he tried to move the injured foot to a more comfortable position it felt like a lump of scorching lead.

The porter entered upon a final malediction, which might be supposed to have gathered destructive force by collecting into itself all those that had gone before, and he directed the whole complex anathema upon the soul of the coward who had done the foul deed, and upon his mother, his sisters and his daughters if he had any, and upon the souls of all his dead relations, men, women and children, and all of his relations that should ever be born, to the end of time. He had been a sailor in his youth.

"Who did that to you?" he asked, when he had thus devoted the unknown offender to everlasting perdition.

"Give me some water, please," said Zorzi, instead of answering the question.

"Water! Oh yes!" Pasquale went to the earthen jar. "Water! Every devil in hell, old and young, will jump and laugh for joy when that man asks for water and has to drink flames!"

Zorzi drank eagerly, though the water was tepid.

"Drink, my son," said Pasquale, holding his head up very tenderly with one of his rough hands. "I will put more within reach for you to drink, while I go and get help."

"They have sent for a surgeon," answered Zorzi.

"A surgeon? No surgeon shall come here. A surgeon will divide you into lengths, fore and aft, and kill you by inches, a length each day, and for every day he takes to kill you, he will ask a piece of silver of the master! If a surgeon comes here I will throw him out into the canal. This is a burn, and it needs an old woman to dress it. Women are evil beings, a chastisement sent upon us for our sins. But an old woman can dress a burn. I go. There is the water."

Zorzi called him back when he was already at the door.

"The fire! It must not go down. Put a little wood in, Pasquale!"

The old porter grumbled. It was unnatural that a man so badly hurt should think of his duties, but in his heart he admired Zorzi all the more for it. He took some wood, and when Zorzi looked, he was trying to poke it through the 'bocca.'

"Not there!" cried Zorzi desperately. "The small opening on the side, near the floor."

Pasquale uttered several maledictions.

"How should I know?" he asked when he had found the right place. "Am I a night boy? Have I ever tended fires for two pence a night and my supper? There! I go!"

Zorzi could hear his voice still, as he went out.

"A surgeon!" he grumbled. "I should like to see the nose of that surgeon at the door!"

Zorzi cared little who came, so that he got some relief. His head was hot now, and the blood beat in his temples like little fiery hammers, that made a sort of screaming noise in his brain. He saw queer lights in circles, and the beams of the ceiling came down very near, and then suddenly went very far away, so that the room seemed a hundred feet high. The pain filled all his right side, and he even thought he could feel it in his arm.

All at once he started, and as he lay on his back his hands tried to grip the flat wood of the bench, and his eyes were wide open and fixed in a sort of frightened stare.

What if he should go mad with pain? Who would remember the fire in the master's furnace? Worse than that, what safety was there that in his delirium he should not speak of the book that was hidden under the stone, the third from the oven and the fourth from the corner?

His brain whirled but he would not go mad, nor lose consciousness, so long as he had the shadow of free will left. Rather than lie there on his back, he would get off his bench, cost what it might, and drag himself to the mouth of the furnace. There was a supply of wood there, piled up by the night boys for use during the day. He could get to it, even if he had to roll himself over and over on the floor. If he could do that, he could keep his hold upon his consciousness, the touch of the billets would remind him, the heat and the roar of the fire would keep him awake and in his right mind.

He raised himself slowly and put his uninjured foot to the floor. Then, with both hands he lifted the other leg off the bench. He was conscious of an increase of pain, which had seemed impossible. It shot through and through his whole body; and he saw flames. There was only one way to do it, he must get down upon his hands and his left knee and drag himself to the furnace in that way. It was a thing of infinite difficulty and suffering, but he did it. Inch by inch, he got nearer.

As his right hand grasped a billet of wood from the little pile, something seemed to break in his head. His strength collapsed, he fell forward from his knee to his full length in the ashes and dust, and he felt nothing more.



CHAPTER X

The porter unbarred the door and looked out. It was nearly noon and the southerly breeze was blowing. The footway was almost deserted. On the other side of the canal, in the shadow of the Beroviero house, an old man who sold melons in slices had gone to sleep under a bit of ragged awning, and the flies had their will of him and his wares. A small boy simply dressed in a shirt, and nothing else, stood at a little distance, looking at the fruit and listening attentively to the voice of the tempter that bade him help himself.

Pasquale looked at the house opposite. Everything was quiet, and the shutters were drawn together, but not quite closed. The flowers outside Marietta's window waved in the light breeze.

"Nella!" cried Pasquale, just as he was accustomed to call the maid when Marietta wanted her.

At the sound of his voice the little boy, who was about to deal effectually with his temptation by yielding to it at once, took to his heels and ran away. But no one looked out from the house. Pasquale called again, somewhat louder. The shutters of Marietta's window were slowly opened inward and Marietta herself appeared, all in white and pale, looking over the flowers.

"What is it?" she asked. "Why do you want Nella?"

The canal was narrow, so that one could talk across it almost in an ordinary tone.

"Your pardon, lady," answered Pasquale. "I did not mean to disturb you. There has been a little accident here, saving your grace."

This he added to avert possible ill fortune. Marietta instantly thought of Zorzi. She leaned forward upon the window-sill above the flowers and spoke anxiously.

"What has happened? Tell me quickly!"

"A man has had his foot badly burned—it must be dressed at once."

"Who is it?"

"Zorzi."

Pasquale saw that Marietta started a little and drew back. Then she leaned forward again.

"Wait there a minute," she said, and disappeared quickly.

The porter heard her calling Nella from an inner room, and then he heard Nella's voice indistinctly. He waited before the open door.

Nella was a born chatterer, but she had her good qualities, and in an emergency she was silent and skilful.

"Leave it to me," she said. "He will need no surgeon."

In her room she had a small store of simple remedies, sweet oil, a pot of balsam, old linen carefully rolled up in little bundles, a precious ointment made from the fat of vipers, which was a marvellous cure for rheumatism in the joints, some syrup of poppies in a stumpy phial, a box of powdered iris root, and another of saffron. She took the sweet oil, the balsam, and some linen. She also took a small pair of scissors which were among her most precious possessions. She threw her large black kerchief over her head and pinned it together under her chin.

When she came back to Marietta's room, her mistress was wrapped in a dark mantle that covered hear thin white dress entirely, and one corner of it was drawn up over her head so as to hide her hair and almost all her face. She was waiting by the door.

"I am going with you," she said, and her voice was not very steady.

"But you will be seen—" began Nella.

"By the porter."

"Your brother may see you—"

"He is welcome. Come, we are losing time." She opened the door and went out quickly.

"I shall certainly be sent away for letting you come!" protested Nella, hurrying after her.

Marietta did not even answer this, which Nella thought very unkind of her. From the main staircase Marietta turned off at the first landing, and went down a short corridor to the back stairs of the house, which led to the narrow lane beside the building. Nella snorted softly in approval, for she had feared that her mistress would boldly pass through the hall where there were always one or two idle men-servants in waiting. The front door was closed against the heat, they had met no one and they reached the door of the glass-house without being seen.

Pasquale looked at Marietta but said nothing until all three were inside. Then he took hold of Marietta's mantle at her elbow, and held her back. She turned and looked at him in amazement.

"You must not go in, lady," he said. "It is an ugly wound to see."

Marietta pushed him aside quietly, and led the way. Nella followed her as fast as she could, and Pasquale came last. He knew that the two women would need help.

Zorzi lay quite still where he had fallen, with one hand on the billet of beech wood, the other arm doubled under him, his cheek on the dusty stone. With a sharp cry Marietta ran forward and knelt beside his head, dropping her long mantle as she crossed the room. Pasquale uttered an uncompromising exclamation of surprise.

"O, most holy Mary!" cried Nella, holding up her hands with the things she carried.

Marietta believed that Zorzi was dead, for he was very white and he lay quite still. At first she opened her eyes wide in horror, but in a moment she sank down, covering her face. Pasquale knelt opposite her on one knee, and began to turn Zorzi on his back. Nella was at his feet, and she helped, with great gentleness.

"Do not be frightened, lady," said Pasquale reassuringly. "He has only fainted. I left him on the bench, but you see he must have tried to get up to feed the fire."

While he spoke he was lifting Zorzi as well as he could. Marietta dropped her hands and slowly opened her eyes, and she knew that Zorzi was alive when she saw his face, though it was ghastly and smeared with grey ashes. But in those few moments she had felt what she could never forget. It had been as if a vast sword-stroke had severed her body at the waist, and yet left her heart alive.

"Can you help a little?" asked Pasquale. "If I could get him into my arms, I could carry him alone."

Marietta sprang to her feet, all her energy and strength returning in a moment. The three carried the unconscious man easily enough to the bench and laid him down, as he had lain before, with his head on the leathern cushion. Then Nella set to work quickly and skilfully, for she hoped to dress the wound while he was still insensible. Marietta helped her, instinctively doing what was right. It was a hideous wound.

"It will heal more quickly than you think," said Nella, confidently. "The burning has cauterised it."

Marietta, delicately reared and unused to such sights, would have felt faint if the man had not been Zorzi. As it was she only felt sharp pain, each time that Nella touched the foot. Pasquale looked on, helpless but approving.

Zorzi groaned, then opened his eyes and moved one hand. Nella had almost finished.

"If only he can be kept quiet a few moments longer," she said, "it will be well done."

Zorzi writhed in pain, only half conscious yet. Marietta left Nella to put on the last bandages, and came and looked down into his face, taking one of his hands in hers. He recognised her, and stared in wild surprise.

"You must try and not move," she said softly. "Nella has almost finished."

He forgot what he suffered, and the agonised contraction of his brows and mouth relaxed. Marietta wiped away the ashes from his forehead and cheeks, and smoothed back his thick hair. No woman's hand had touched him thus since his mother's when he had been a little child. He was too weak to question what was happening to him, but a soft light came into his eyes, and he unconsciously pressed Marietta's hand.

She blushed at the pressure, without knowing why, and first the maiden instinct was to draw away her hand, but then she pitied him and let it stay. She thought, too, that her touch helped to keep him quiet, and indeed it did.

"How did you know?" he asked at length, for in his half consciousness it had seemed natural that she should have come to him when she heard that he was hurt.

"Pasquale called Nella," she answered simply, "and I came too. Is the pain still very great?"

"It is much less. How can I thank you?"

She looked into his eyes and smiled as he had seen her smile once or twice before in his life. His memory all came back now. He knew that she ought not to have been there, since her father was away. His expression changed suddenly.

"What is the matter?" asked Marietta. "Does it hurt very much?"

"No," he said. "I was thinking—" He checked himself, and glanced at the porter.

A distant knocking was heard at the outer door, Pasquale shuffled off to see who was there.

"I will wager that it is the surgeon!" he grumbled. "Evil befall his soul! We do not want him."

"What were you going to say?" asked Marietta, bending down. "There is only Nella here now."

"Nella should not have let you come," said Zorzi. "If it is known, your father will be very angry."

"Ah, do you see?" cried Nella, rising, for she had finished. "Did I not tell you so, my pretty lady? And if your brother finds out that you have been here he will go into a fury like a wild beast! I told you so! And as for your help, indeed, I could have brought another woman, and there was Pasquale, too. I suppose he has hands. Oh, there will be a beautiful revolution in the house when this is known!"

But Marietta did not mean to acknowledge that she had done anything but what was perfectly right and natural under the circumstances; to admit that would have been to confess that she had not come merely out of pity and human kindness.

"It is absurd," she said with a little indignation. "I shall tell my brother myself that Zorzi was hurt, and that I helped you to dress his wound. And what is more, Nella, you will have to come; again, and I shall come with you as often as I please. All Murano may know it for anything I care."

"And Venice too?" asked Nella, shaking her head in disapproval. "What will they say in Casa Contarini when they hear that you have actually gone out of the house to help a wounded young man in your father's glass-house?"

"If they are human, they will say that I was quite right," answered Marietta promptly. "If they are not, why should I care what they say?"

Zorzi smiled. At that moment Pasquale passed the window, and then came in by the open door, growling. His ugly face was transfigured by rage, until it had a sort of grotesque grandeur, and he clenched his fist as he began to speak.

"Animals! Beasts! Brutes! Worse than savages! He was almost incoherent.

"Well? What has happened now?" asked. Nella. "You talk like a mad dog. Remember the young lady!"

"It would make a leaden statue speak!" answered Pasquale. "The Signor Giovanni sends a boy to say that the Surgeon was not at home, because he had gone to shave the arch-priest of San Piero!"

In spite of the great pain he still suffered, Zorzi laughed, a little.

"You said that you would throw, him into the canal if he came at all," he said.

"Yes, and so I meant to do!" cried Pasquale. "But that is no reason why the inhuman monster should be shaving the arch-priest when a man might be dying for need of him! Oh, let him come here! Oh, I advise him to come! The miserable, cowardly, bloodletting, soap-sudding, shaving little beast of a barber!"

Pasquale drew a long breath after this, and unclenched his fist, but his lips still moved, as he said things to himself which would have shocked Marietta if she could have had the least idea of what they meant.

"You cannot stay here," she said, turning to Zorzi again. "You cannot lie on this bench all day."

"I shall soon be able to stand," answered Zorzi confidently. "I am much better."

"You will not stand on that foot for many a day," said Nella, shaking her head.

"Then Pasquale must get me a pair of crutches," replied Zorzi. "I cannot lie on my back because I have hurt one foot. I must tend the furnace, I must go on with my work, I must make the tests, I must—"

He stopped short and bit his lip, turning white again as a spasm of excruciating pain shot along his right side, from his foot upwards. Marietta bent over him, full of anxiety.

"You are suffering!" she said tenderly. "You must not try to move."

"It is nothing," he answered through his closed teeth. "It will pass, I daresay."

"It will not pass to-day," said Nella. "But I will bring you some syrup of poppies. That will make you sleep."

Marietta seemed to feel the pain herself. She smoothed the leathern cushion under his head as well as she could, and softly touched his forehead. It was hot and dry now.

"He is feverish," she said to Nella anxiously.

"I will bring him barley water with the syrup of poppies. What do you expect? Do you think that such a wound and such a burn are cooling to the blood, and refreshing to the brain? The man is badly hurt. Of course he is feverish. He ought to be in his bed, like a decent Christian."

"Some one must help me with the work," said Zorzi faintly.

"There is no one but me," answered Marietta after a moment's pause.

"You?" cried Nella, greatly scandalised.

Even Pasquale stared at Marietta in silent astonishment.

"Yes," she said quietly. "There is no one else who knows enough about my father's work."

"That is true," said Zorzi. "But you cannot come here and work with me."

Marietta turned away and walked to the window. In her thin dress she stood there a few minutes, like a slender lily, all white and gold in the summer light.

"It is out of the question!" protested Nella. "Her brother will never allow her to come. He will lock her up in her own room for safety, till the master comes home."

"I think I shall always do just what I think right," said Marietta quietly, as if to herself.

"Lord!" cried Nella. "The young lady is going mad!"

Nella was gathering together the remains of the things she had brought. Exhausted by the pain he had suffered, and by the efforts he had made to hide it, Zorzi lay on his back, looking with half-closed eyes at the graceful outline of the girl's figure, and vaguely wishing that she would never move, and that he might be allowed to die while quietly gazing at her.

"Lady," said Pasquale at last, and rather timidly, "I will take good care of him. I will get him crutches to-morrow. I will come in the daytime and keep the fire burning for him."

"It would be far better to let it go out," observed Nella, with much sense.

"But the experiments!" cried Zorzi, suddenly coming back from his dream. "I have promised the master to carry them out."

"You see what comes of your glass-working," retorted Nella, pointing to his bandaged foot.

"How did it happen?" asked Marietta suddenly. "How did you do it?"

"It was done for him," said Pasquale, "and may the Last Judgment come a hundred times over for him who did it!"

His intention was clearer than his words.

"Do you mean that it was done on purpose, out of spite?" asked Marietta, looking from Pasquale to Zorzi.

"It was an accident," said the latter. "I was in the main furnace room with your brother. The blow-pipe with the hot glass slipped from a man's hand. Your brother saw it—he will tell you."

"I have been porter here for five-and-twenty years," retorted Pasquale, "and there have been several accidents in that time. But I never heard of one like that."

"It was nothing else," said Zorzi.

His voice was weak. Nella had finished collecting her belongings. Marietta saw that she could not stay any longer at present, and she went once more to Zorzi's side.

"Let Pasquale take care of you to-day," she said. "I will come and see how you are to-morrow morning."

"I thank you," he answered. "I thank you with all my heart. I have no words to tell you how much."

"You need none," said she quietly. "I have done nothing. It is Nella who has helped you."

"Nella knows that I am very grateful."

"Of course, of course!" answered the woman kindly. "You have made him talk too much," she added, speaking to Marietta. "Let us go away. I must prepare the barley water. It takes a long time."

"Is he to have nothing but barley water?" asked Pasquale.

"I will send him what he is to have," answered Nella, with an air of superiority.

Marietta looked back at Zorzi from the door, and his eyes were following her. She bent her head gravely and went out, followed by the others, and he was alone again. But it was very different now. The spasms of pain came back now and then, but there was rest between them, for there was a potent anodyne in the balsam with which Nella had soaked the first dressing. Of all possible hurts, the pain from burning is the most acute and lasting, and the wise little woman, who sometimes seemed so foolish, had done all that science could have done for Zorzi, even at a much later day. He could think connectedly now, he had been able to talk; had it been possible for him to stand, he might even have gone on for a time with the preparations for the next experiment. Yet he felt an instinctive certainty that he was to be lame for life.

He was not thinking of the experiments just then; he could think of nothing but Marietta. Four or five days had passed since he had talked with her in the garden, and she was now formally promised to Jacopo Contarini. He wondered why she had come with Nella, and he remembered her earnest offer of friendship. She meant to show him that she was still in earnest, he supposed. It had been perfect happiness to feel her cool young hand on his forehead, to press it in his own. No one could take that from him, as long as he lived. He remembered it through the horrible pain it had soothed, and it was better than the touch of an angel, for it was the touch of a loving woman. But he did not know that, and be fancied that if she had ever guessed that he loved her, she would not have come to him now. She would feel that the mere thought in his heart was an offence. And besides, she was to marry Contarini, and she was not of the kind that would promise to marry one man and yet encourage love in another. It was well, thought Zorzi, that she had never suspected the truth.

When Marietta reached her room again she listened patiently to Nella's scolding and warning, for she did not hear a word the good woman said to her. Nella brushed the dust from the silk mantle and from Marietta's white skirt very industriously, lest it should betray the secret to Giovanni or any other member of the household. For they had escaped being seen, even when they came back.

Nella scolded on in a little sing-song voice, with many rising inflections. In her whole life, she said, she had never connived at anything more utterly shameless than this! She was humble, indeed, and of no account in the world, but if she had run out in the middle of the day to visit a young man when she was betrothed to her poor Vito, blessed soul, and the Lord remember him, her poor Vito would have gone to her father, might the Lord refresh his soul, and would have said, "What ways are these? Do you think I will marry a girl who runs about in this fashion?" That was what Vito would have said. And he would have said, "Give me back the gold things I gave your daughter, and let me go and find a wife who does not run about the city." And it would have been well said. Did Marietta suppose that an educated person like the lord Jacopo Contarini would be less particular about his bride's manners than that good soul Vito? Not that Vito had been ignorant. Nella should have liked any one to dare to say that she had married an ignorant man! And so forth. And so on.

Marietta heard the voice without listening to the words, and the gentle, half-complaining, half-reproving tone was rather soothing than otherwise. She sat by the half-closed window with her bead work, while Nella talked, and brushed, and moved about the room, making imaginary small tasks in order to talk the more. But Marietta threaded the red and blue beads and fastened them in patterns upon the piece of stuff she was ornamenting, and when Nella looked at her every now and then, she seemed quite calm and indifferent. There had always been something inscrutable about her.

She was wondering why she had submitted to be betrothed to Contarini, when she loved Zorzi; and the answer did not come. She could not understand why it was that although she loved Zorzi with all her heart she had been convinced that she hated him, during four long, miserable days. Then, too, it was very strange that she should feel happy, that she should know that she was really happy, her heart brimming over with sunshine and joy, while Zorzi, whom she loved, was lying on that uncomfortable bench in dreadful pain. It was true that when she thought of his wound, the pain ran through her own limbs and made her move in her seat. But the next moment she was perfectly happy again, and yet was displeased with herself for it, as if it were not quite right.

Nella stood still at last, close to her, and spoke to her so directly that she could not help hearing.

"My little lady," said the woman, "do not forget that the women are coming early to-morrow morning to show you the stuffs which your father has chosen for your wedding gown."

"Yes. I remember."

Marietta laid down her work in the little basket of beads and looked away towards the window. Between the shutters she could just see one of the scarlet flowers of the sweet geranium, waving in the sunlight. It was true. The women were coming in the morning to begin the work. They would measure her, and cut out patterns in buckram and fit them on her, making her stand a long time. They would spread out silks and satins on the bed and on the table, they would hold them up and make long draperies with them, and make the light flash in the deep folds, and they would tell her how beautiful she would be as a bride, and that her skin was whiter than lilies and milk and snow, and her hair finer than silk and richer than ropes of spun red gold. While they were saying those things she would look very grave and indifferent, and nothing they could show her would make her open her eyes wide; but her heart would laugh long and sweetly, for she should be infinitely happy, though no one would know it. She would give no opinion about the gown, no matter how they pressed her with questions.

After that the pieces that were to be embroidered would be very carefully weighed, the silk and the satin, and the weights of the pieces would be written down. Also, each of the hired women who were to make the embroidery would receive a certain amount of silver and gold thread, of which the weight would be written down under that of the stuff, and the two figures added together would mean just what the finished piece of embroidery ought to weigh. For if this were not done, the women would of course steal the gold and silver thread, a little every day, and take it away in their mouths, because the housekeeper would always search them every evening, in spite of the weighing. But they were well paid for the work and did not object to being suspected, for it was part of their business.

In time, Marietta would go to see the work they were doing, in the great cool loft where they would sit all day, where the linen presses stood side by side, and the great chests which held the hangings and curtains and carpets that were used on great occasions. The housekeeper had her little room up there, and could watch the sewing-women at their work and scold them if they were idle, noting how much should be taken from their pay. The women would sing long songs, answering each other for an hour at a time, but no one would hear them below, because the house was so big.

By and by the work would be almost finished, and then it would be quite done, and the wedding day would be very near. There Marietta's vision of the future suddenly came to a climax, as she tried to imagine what would happen when she should boldly declare that neither her father, nor the Council of Ten, nor the Doge himself, nor even His Holiness Pope Paul, who was a Venetian too, could ever make her marry Jacopo Contarini. There would be such a convulsion of the family as had never taken place since she was born. In her imagination she fancied all Murano taking sides for her or against her; even Venice itself would be amazed at the temerity of a girl who dared to refuse the husband her father had chosen for her. It would be an outrage on all authority, a scandal never to be forgotten, an unheard-of rebellion against the natural law by which unmarried children were held in bondage as slaves to their parents. But Marietta was not frightened by the tremendous consequences her fancy deduced from her refusal to marry. She was happy. Some day, the man she loved would know that she had faced the world for him, rather than be bound to any one else, and he would love her all the more dearly for having risked so much. She had never been so happy before. Only, now and then, when she thought of Zorzi's hurt, she felt a sharp thrill of pain run through her.

All day the tide of joy was high in her heart. Towards evening, she sent Nella over to the glass-house to see how Zorzi was doing, and as soon as the woman was gone she stood at the open window, behind her flowers, to watch her go in, Pasquale would look out, the door would be open for a moment, she would be a little nearer.

Even in that small anticipation she was not disappointed. It was a new joy to be able to look from her window into the dark entry that led to the place where Zorzi was. To-morrow, or the next day, he would perhaps come to the door, helped by Pasquale, but to-morrow morning she would go and see him, come what might. She was not afraid of her brother Giovanni, and it might be long before her father came back. Till then, at all events, she would do what she thought right, no matter how Nella might be scandalised.

Nella came back, and said that Zorzi was better, that he had slept all the afternoon and now had very little pain, and he was not in any anxiety about the furnace, for Pasquale had kept the fire burning properly all day. Zorzi had begged Nella to deliver a message of thanks.

"Try and remember just what he told you," said Marietta.

"There was nothing especial," answered Nella with exasperating indifference. "He said that I was to thank you very much. Something like that—nothing else."

"I am sure that those were not his words. Why did you forget them?"

"If it had been an account of money spent, I should remember it exactly," answered Nella. "A pennyworth of thread, beeswax a farthing, so much for needles; I should forget nothing. But when a man says 'I thank you,' what is there to remember? But you are never satisfied! Nella may work her hands to the bone for you, Nella may run errands for you till she is lame, you are never pleased with what Nella does! It is always the same."

She tossed her brown head to show that she was offended. But Marietta laughed softly and patted the little woman's cheek affectionately.

"You are a dear little old angel," she said.

Nella was pacified.



CHAPTER XI

The porter kept his word, and took good care of Zorzi. When the night boys had come, he carried him into the inner room and put him to bed like a child. Zorzi asked him to tell the boys to wake him at the watches, as they had done on the previous night, and Pasquale humoured him, but when he went away he wisely forgot to give the message, and the lads, who knew that he had been hurt, supposed that he was not to be disturbed. It was broad daylight when he awoke and saw Pasquale standing beside him.

"Are the boys gone already?" he asked, almost as he opened his eyes.

"No, they are all asleep in a corner," answered the porter.

"Asleep!" cried Zorzi, in sudden anxiety. "Wake them, Pasquale, and see whether the sand-glass has been turned and is running, and whether the fire is burning. The young good-for-nothings!"

"I will wake them," answered Pasquale. "I supposed that they were allowed to sleep after daylight."

A moment later Zorzi heard him apostrophising the three lads with his usual vigour of language. Judging from the sounds that accompanied the words he was encouraging their movements by other means also. Presently one of the three set up a howl.

"Oh, you sons of snails and codfish, I will teach you!" growled Pasquale; and he proceeded to teach them, till they were all three howling at once.

Zorzi knew that they deserved a beating, but he was naturally tender-hearted.

"Pasquale!" he called out. "Let them alone! Let them make up the fire!"

Pasquale came back, and the yells subsided.

"I have knocked their empty heads together," he observed. "They will not sleep for a week. Yes, the sand-glass has run out, but the fire is not very low. I will bring you water, and when you are dressed I will carry you out into the laboratory."

The boys did not dare to go away till they had made up the fire. Then they took themselves off, and as Pasquale let them out he treated them to a final expression of his opinion. The tallest of the three was bleeding from his nose, which had been brought into violent conjunction with the skull of one of his companions. When the door was shut, and they had gone a few steps along the footway, he stopped the others.

"We are glass-blowers' sons," he said, "and we have been beaten by that swine of a porter. Let us be revenged on him. Even Zorzi would not have dared to touch us, because he is a foreigner."

"We can do nothing," answered the smallest boy disconsolately. "If I tell my father that we went to sleep, he will say that the porter served us right, and I shall get another beating."

"You are cowards," said the first speaker. "But I am wounded," he continued proudly, pointing to his nose. "I will go to the master and ask redress. I will sit down before the door and wait for him."

"Do what you please," returned the others. "We will go home."

"You have no spirit of honour in you," said the tall boy contemptuously.

He turned his back on them in disdain, crossed the bridge and sat down under the covered way in front of Beroviero's house. He smeared the blood over his face till he really looked as if he might be badly hurt, and he kept up a low, tremulous moaning. His nose really hurt him, and as he was extremely sorry for himself some real tears came into his eyes now and then. He waited a long time. The front door was opened and two men came out with brooms and began to sweep. When they saw him they were for making him go away, but he cried out that he was waiting for the Signor Giovanni, to show him how a free glass-blower's son had been treated by a dog of a foreigner and a swine of a porter over there in the glass-house. Then the servants let him stay, for they feared the porter and hated Zorzi for being a Dalmatian.

At last Giovanni came out, and the boy at once uttered a particularly effective moan. Giovanni stopped and looked at him, and he gulped and sobbed vigorously.

"Get up and go away at once!" said Giovanni, much disgusted by the sight of the blood.

"I will not go till you hear me, sir," answered the boy dramatically. "I am a free glass-blower's son and I have been beaten like this by the porter of the glass-house! This is the way we are treated, though we work to learn the art as our fathers worked before us."

"You probably went to sleep, you little wretch," observed Giovanni. "Get out of my way, and go home!"

"Justice, sir! Justice!" moaned the boy, dropping himself on his knees.

"Nonsense! Go away!" Giovanni pushed him aside, and began to walk on.

The boy sprang up and followed him, and running beside him as Giovanni tried to get away, touched the skirt of his coat respectfully, and then kissed the back of his own hand.

"If you will listen to me, sir," he said in a low voice, "I will tell you something you wish to know."

Giovanni stopped short and looked at him with curiosity.

"I will tell you of something the master did on the Sunday night before he went on his journey," continued the lad. "I am one of the night boys in the laboratory, and I saw with my eyes while the others were asleep, for we had been told to wait till we were called."

Giovanni looked about, to see whether any one was within hearing. They were still in the covered footway above which the first story of the house was built, but were near the end, and the shutters of the lower windows were closed.

"Tell me what you saw," said Giovanni, "but do not speak loud."

At this moment the other two boys came running up with noisy lamentations. With the wisdom of their kind they had patiently watched to see whether their companion would get a hearing of the master, and judging that he had been successful at last, they came to enjoy the fruit of his efforts.

"We also have been beaten!" they wailed, but they bore no outward and visible signs of ill-treatment on them.

The elder boy turned upon them with righteous fury, and to their unspeakable surprise began to drive them away with kicks and blows. They could not stand against him, and after a brief resistance, they turned and ran at full speed. The victor came back to Giovanni's side.

"They are cowardly fellows," he said, with disdain. "They are ignorant boys. What do you expect? But they will not come back."

"Go on with your story," said Giovanni impatiently, "but speak low."

"It was on Sunday night, sir. The master came to talk with Zorzi in the laboratory. I was in the garden, at the entrance of the other passage. When the door opened there was not much light, and the master was wrapped in his cloak, and he turned a little, and went in sideways, so I knew that he had something under his arm, for the door is narrow."

"He was probably bringing over some valuable materials," said Giovanni.

"I believe he was bringing the great book," said the boy confidently, but almost in a whisper.

"What great book?"

The lad looked at Giovanni with an expression of cunning on his face, as much as to say that he was not to be deceived by such a transparent pretence of ignorance.

"He was afraid to leave it in his house," he said, "lest you should find it and learn how to make the gold as he does. So he took it over to the laboratory at night."

Giovanni began to understand, though it was the first time he had heard that the boys, like the common people, suspected Angelo Beroviero of being an alchemist. It was clear that the boy meant the book that contained the priceless secrets for glass-making which Giovanni and his brother had so long coveted. His interest increased.

"After all," he said, "you saw nothing distinctly. My father went in and shut the door, I suppose."

"Yes," answered the boy. "But after a long time the door opened again."

He stopped, resolved to be questioned, in order that his information should seem more valuable. The instinct of small boys is often as diabolically keen as that of a grown woman.

"Go on!" said Giovanni, more and more interested. "The door opened again, you say? Then my father came out—"

"No, sir. Zorzi came out into the light that fell from the door. The master was inside."

"Well, what did Zorzi do? Be quick!"

"He brought out a shovel full of earth, sir, and he carefully scattered it about over the flower-bed, and then he went back, and presently he came out with the shovel again, and more earth; and so three times. They had buried the great book somewhere in the laboratory."

"But the laboratory is paved," objected Giovanni, to gain time, for he was thinking.

"There is earth under the stones, sir. I remember seeing it last year when the masons put down several new slabs. The great book is somewhere under the floor of the laboratory. I must have stepped over it in feeding the fire last night, and that is why the devils that guard it inspired the porter to beat me this morning. It was the devils that sent us to sleep, for fear that we should find it."

"I daresay," said Giovanni with much gravity, for he thought it better that the boy should be kept in awe of an object that possessed such immense value. "You should be careful in future, or ill may befall you."

"Is it true, sir, that I have told you something you wished to know?"

"I am glad to know that the great book is safe," answered Giovanni ambiguously.

"Zorzi knows where it is," suggested, the boy in a tone meant to convey the suspicion that Zorzi might use his knowledge.

"Yes—yes," repeated Giovanni thoughtfully, "and he is ill. He ought to be brought over to the house until he is better."

"Then the furnace could be allowed to get out, sir, could it not?"

"Yes. The weather is growing warm, as it is. Yes—the furnace may be put out now." Giovanni hardly knew that he was speaking aloud. "Zorzi will get well much sooner if he is in a good room in the house. I will see to it."