He said nothing, when he withdrew to rest during the hot hours of the afternoon, and she went to her own room as every one did at that time.  Little as she had slept that night, she felt that it would be intolerable to lie down; so she took her little basket of beads and tried to work.  Nella was dozing in the next room.  From time to time the young girl leaned back in her chair with half-closed eyes, and a look of pain came over her face; then with an effort she took her needle once more, and picked out the beads, threading them one by one in a regular succession of colours.

She was sure that if Zorzi were near he would have already found some means of informing her that he was really in safety.  He must have friends of whom she knew nothing, and who had rescued him at great risk.  He would surely trust one of them to take a message, or to make a signal which she could understand.  She sat near the window, and the shutters were half closed so as to leave a space through which she could look out.  From time to time she glanced at the white line of the footway opposite, over which the shadow of the glass-house was beginning to creep as the sun moved westward.  But no one appeared.  When it was cool Pasquale would probably come out and look three times up and down the canal as he always did.  Giovanni would not go to the laboratory again.  Perhaps her father would go, when, he was rested.  Then, if she chose, she could take Nella and join him, and since there was to be an explanation with him, she would rather have it in the laboratory, where they would be quite alone.

She had fully made up her mind to tell him at the very first interview that she would not marry Jacopo Contarini under any circumstances, but she had not decided whether she would add that she loved Zorzi.  She hated anything like cowardice, and it would be cowardly to put off telling the truth any longer; but what concerned Zorzi was her secret, and she had a right to choose the most favourable moment for making a revelation on which her whole life, and Zorzi’s also, must immediately depend.  She felt weak and tired, for she had eaten little and hardly slept at all, but her determination was strong and she would act upon it.

Occasionally she rose and moved wearily about the room, looked out between the shutters and then sat down again.  She was in one of those moments of life in which all existence seems drawn out to an endless quivering thread, a single throbbing nerve stretched to its utmost point of strain.

The silence was broken by a man’s footstep in the passage, coming towards her door.  A moment later she heard her father’s voice, asking if he might come in.  Almost at the same time she opened and Beroviero stood on the threshold.  Nella had heard him speaking, too, and she started up, wide awake in an instant, and came in, to see if she were needed.

“Will you go with me to the laboratory, my dear?” asked the old man quietly.