Not a sound broke the stillness, as she looked out, and the glassy waters of the canal reflected delicate tints from the sky, palest green and faintest violet and amber with all the lovely changing colours of the dawn.  By the footway a black barge was moored, piled high with round uncovered baskets of beads, white, blue, deep red and black, waiting to be taken over to Venice where they would be threaded for the East, and the colours stood out in strong contrast with the grey stones, the faint reflections in the water and the tender sky above.  There were flowers on the window-sill, a young rose with opening buds, growing in a red earthen jar, and a pot of lavender just bursting into flower, with a sweet geranium beside it and some rosemary.  Zorzi had planted them all for her, and her serving-woman had helped her to fasten the pots in the window, because it would have been out of the question that any man except her father should enter her room, even when she was not there.  But they were Zorzi’s flowers, and she bent down and smelt their fragrance.  On a table behind her a single rose hung over the edge of a tall glass with a slender stem, almost the counterpart of the one in which Contarini had drunk her health at midnight.  Her father had given it to her as it came from the annealing oven, still warm after long hours of cooling with many others like it.  She loved it for its grace and lightness, and as for the rose, it was the one she had made Zorzi give back to her yesterday.  She meant to keep it in water till it faded, and then she would press it between the first page and the binding of her parchment missal.  It would keep some of its faint scent, perhaps, and if any one saw it, no one would ever guess whence it came.

It meant a great thing to her, for it had told her Zorzi’s secret, which he had kept so well.  He should know hers some day, but not yet, and her drooping lids could hide it if it ever came into her eyes.  It was too soon to let him know that she loved him.  That was one reason for hiding it, but she had another.  If her father guessed that she loved the waif, it would fare ill with him.  She fancied she could see the old man’s fiery brown eyes and hear his angry voice.  Poor Zorzi would be driven from Murano and Venice, never to set foot again within the boundaries of the Republic; for Beroviero was a man of weight and influence, of whom Venice was proud.

Youth would be very sad if it counted time and labour as it is reckoned and valued by mature age.  Some day Zorzi would be no longer a mere paid helper, calling himself a servant when his humour was bitter, tending a fire on his knees and grinding coloured earths and salts in a mortar.  He had the understanding of the glorious art, and the true love of it, with the magic touch; he would make a name for himself in spite of the harsh Venetian law, and some day his master would be proud to call him son.  There would not be many months to wait.  Months or years, what