He stood upright on the high stern of the shadowy craft, himself but a moving shadow in the starlight, thrown forward now, and now once more erect, in changing motion; and as he moved the same thought came back and back again in a sort of halting and painful rhythm.  He was out that night on a bad errand, it said, helping to sell the life of the woman he loved, and what he was doing could never be undone.  Again and again the words said themselves, the far-off voices said them, the lapping water took them up and repeated them, the breeze whispered them quickly as it passed, the oar pronounced them as it creaked softly in the crutch rowlock, the stars spelled out the sentences in the sky, the lights of Venice wrote them in the water in broken reflections.  He was not alone any more, for everything in heaven and earth was crying to him to go back.

That was folly, and he knew it.  The master who had trusted him would drive him out of his house, and out of Venetian land and water, too, if he chose, and he should never see Marietta again; and she would be married to Contarini just as if Zorzi had taken the message.  Besides, it was the custom of the world everywhere, so far as he knew, that marriage and money should be spoken of in the same breath, and there was no reason why his master should make an exception and be different from other men.

He could put some hindrance in the way, of course, if he chose to interfere, for he could deliver the message wrong, and Contarini would go to the church in the afternoon instead of in the morning.  He smiled grimly in the dark as he thought of the young nobleman waiting for an hour or two beside the pillar, to be looked at by some one who never came, then catching sight at last of some ugly old maid of forty, protected by her servant, ogling him, while she said her prayers and filling him with horror at the thought that she must be Marietta Beroviero.  All that might happen, but it must inevitably be found out, the misunderstanding would be cleared away and the marriage would be arranged after all.

He had rested on his oar to think, and now he struck it deep into the black water and the skiff shot ahead.  He would have a far better chance of serving Marietta in the future if he obeyed his master and delivered his message exactly; for he should see Contarini himself and judge of him, in the first place, and that alone was worth much, and afterwards there would be time enough for desperate resolutions.  He hastened his stroke, and when he ran under the shadow of the overhanging houses his mood changed and he grew hopeful, as many young men do, out of sheer curiosity as to what was before him, and out of the wish to meet something or somebody that should put his own strength to the test.

It was not far now.  With infinite caution he threaded the dark canals, thanking fortune for the faint starlight that showed him the turnings.  Here and there a small oil lamp burned before the image of a saint; from a narrow lane on one side, the light streamed across the water, and with it came sounds of ringing glasses, and the tinkling of a lute, and laughing voices; then it was dark again as his skiff shot by, and he made haste, for he wished not to be seen.