Marietta was his perfect ideal, the most exquisite, the most beautiful and the most lovable creature ever endowed with form and sent into the world by the powers of good.  He believed all this in his heart, with the certainty of absolute knowledge.  But he was quite incapable of discerning the motives of her conduct towards him, and when he tried to understand them, it was not his heart that felt, but his reason that argued, having very little knowledge and no experience at all to help it; and since his erring reason demonstrated something that offended his self-esteem, his heart was hurt and nursed a foolish, small resentment against what he truly loved better than life itself.  At one time or another most very young men in love have found themselves in that condition, and have tormented themselves to the verge of fever and distraction over imaginary hurts and wrongs.  Was there ever a true lyric poet who did not at least once in his early days believe himself the victim of a heartless woman?  And though long afterwards fate may have brought him face to face with the tragedy of unhappy love, fierce with passion and terrible with violent death, can he ever quite forget the fancied sufferings of first youth, the stab of a thoughtless girl’s first unkind word, the sickening chill he felt under her first cold look?  And what would first love be, if young men and maidens came to it with all the reason and cool self-judgment that long living brings?

Zorzi sought consolation in his art, and as soon as he could stand and move about with his crutches he threw his whole pent-up energy into his work.  The accidental discovery of the red glass had unexpectedly given him an empty crucible with which to make an experiment of his own, and while the materials were fusing he attempted to obtain the new colour in the other two, by dropping pieces of copper into each regardless of the master’s instructions.  To his inexpressible disappointment he completely failed in this, and the glass he produced was of the commonest tint.

Then he grew reckless; he removed the two crucibles that had contained what had been made according to Beroviero’s theories until he had added the copper, and he began afresh according to his own belief.

On that very morning Giovanni Beroviero made a second visit to the laboratory.  He came, he said, to make sure that Zorzi was recovering from his hurt, and Zorzi knew from Nella that Giovanni had made inquiries about him.  He put on an air of sympathy when he saw the crutches.

“You will soon throw them aside,” he said, “but I am sorry that you should have to use them at all.”