He stood still, looking down at the canal till the last of the men had passed in.  Then, before he went on, he raised his eyes slowly to Marietta’s window, not guessing that her own were answering his from behind the rosemary and the geranium.  His pale face was very sad and thoughtful as he looked up.  She had never seen him look so tired.  The porter had shut the door, which he never allowed to remain open one moment longer than was absolutely necessary, and Zorzi stood quite alone on the footway.  As he looked, his face softened and grew so tender that the girl who watched him unseen stretched out her arms towards him with unconscious yearning, and her heart beat very fast, so that she felt the pulses in her throat almost choking her; yet her face was pale and her soft lips were dry and cold.  For it was not all happiness that she felt; there was a sweet mysterious pain with it, which was nowhere, and yet all through her, that was weakness and yet might turn to strength, a hunger of longing for something dear and unknown and divine, without which all else was an empty shadow.  Then her eyes opened to him, as he had never seen them, blue as the depth of sapphires and dewy with love mists of youth’s early spring; it was impossible that he should stand there, just beyond the narrow water, and not feel that she saw him and loved him, and that her heart was crying out the true words he never hoped to hear.

But he did not know.  And all at once his eyes fell, and she could almost see that he sighed as he turned wearily away and walked with bent head towards the wooden bridge.  She would have given anything to look out and see him cross and come nearer, but she remembered that she was not yet dressed, and she blushed as she drew further back into the room, gathering the thin white linen up to her throat, and frightened at the mere thought that he should catch sight of her.  She would not call her serving-woman yet, she would be alone a little while longer.  She threw back her russet hair, and bent down to smell the rose in the tall glass.  The sun was risen now and the first slanting beams shot sideways through her window from the right.  The day that was to be so sweet had begun most sweetly.  She had seen him already, far earlier than usual; she would see him many times before the little brown maid crossed the canal to bring her home in the evening.

The thought put an end to her meditations, and she was suddenly in haste to be dressed, to be out of the house, to be sitting in the little garden of the glass-house where Zorzi must soon pass again.  She called and clapped her hands, and her serving-woman entered from the outer room in which she slept.  She brought a great painted earthenware dish, on which fruit was arranged, half of a small yellow melon fresh from the cool storeroom, a little heap of dark red cherries and a handful of ripe plums.  There was white wheaten bread, too, and honey from Aquileia, in a little glass jar, and there was a goblet of cold water.  The maid set the big dish on the table, beside the glass that held Zorzi’s rose, and began to make ready her mistress’s clothes.