“Should you love me more, if I understood Greek?” asked Arisa softly.  “If I thought so, I would learn it.”

Aristarchi laughed roughly, so that she was almost afraid lest he should be heard far down in the house.

“Learn Greek?  You?  To make me like you better?  You would be just as beautiful if you were altogether dumb!  A man does not love a woman for what she can say to him, in any language.”

He turned up his face, and his rough hands drew her splendid head down to him, till he could kiss her.  Then there was silence for a few minutes.

He shook his great shoulders at last.

“Everything else is a waste of time,” he said, as if speaking to himself.

Her head lay on the cushions now, and she watched him with half-closed eyes in the soft light, and now and then the thin embroideries that covered her neck and bosom rose and fell with a long, satisfied sigh.  He rose to his feet and slowly paced the marble floor, up and down before her, as he would have paced the little poop-deck of his vessel.

“I am glad you told me about that glass-blower,” he said suddenly.  “I have met him and talked with him, and I may meet him again.  He is old Beroviero’s chief assistant.  I fancy he is in love with the daughter.”

“In love with the girl whom Contarini is to marry?” asked Arisa, suddenly opening her eyes.

“Yes.  I told you what I said to the old man in his private room—­it was more like a brick-kiln than a rich man’s counting-house!  While I was inside, the young man was talking to the girl under a tree.  I saw them through a low window as I sat discussing business with Beroviero.”

“You could not hear what they said, I suppose.”

“No.  But I could see what they looked.”  Aristarchi laughed at his own conceit.  “The girl was doing some kind of work.  The young man stood beside her, resting one hand against the tree.  I could not see his face all the time, but I saw hers.  She is in love with him.  They were talking earnestly and she said something that had a strong effect upon him, for I saw that he stood a long time looking at the trunk of the tree, and saying nothing.  What can you make of that, except that they are in love with each other?”

“That is strange,” said Arisa, “for it was he that brought the message to Contarini, bidding him go and see her in Saint Mark’s.  That was how he chanced upon them, downstairs, at their last meeting.”

“How do you know it was that message, and not some other?”

“Contarini told me.”

“But if the boy loves her, as I am sure he does, why should he have delivered the message?” asked; the cunning Greek.  “It would have been very easy for him to have named another hour, and Contarini would never have seen her.  Besides, he had a fine chance then to send the future husband to Paradise!  He needed only to name a quiet street, instead of the Church, and to appoint the hour at dusk.  One, two and three in the back, the body to the canal, and the marriage would have been broken off.”