He had never had any hope that she would love him, much less that he could ever marry her, yet he felt that he was parting with the only thing in life which he held higher than his art, and that the parting was final.  For months, perhaps for years, he had never closed his eyes to sleep without calling up her face and repeating her name, he had never got up in the morning without looking forward to seeing her and hearing her voice before he should lie down again.  A man more like others would have said to himself that no promise could bind him to anything more than the performance of an action, or the abstention from one, and that the right of dreaming was his own for ever.  But Zorzi judged differently.  He had a sensitiveness that was rather manly than masculine; he had scruples of which he was not ashamed, but which most men would laugh at; he had delicacies of conscience in his most private thoughts such as would have been more natural in a cloistered nun, living in ignorance of the world, than in a waif who had faced it at its worst, and almost from childhood.  Innocent as his dream had been, he resolved to part with it, and never to dream it again.  He was glad that Marietta had taken back the rose he had picked up yesterday; if she had not, he would have forced himself to throw it away, and that would have hurt him.

So he began his day in a melancholy mood, as having buried out of sight for ever something that was very dear to him.  In time, his love of his art would fill the place of the other love, but on this first day he went about in silence, with hungry eyes and tightened lips, like a man who is starving and is too proud to ask a charity.

He waited for Beroviero at the door of his house, as he did every morning, to attend him to the laboratory.  The old man looked at him inquiringly, and Zorzi bent his head a little to explain that he had done what had been required of him, and he followed his master across the wooden bridge.  When they were alone in the laboratory, he told as much of his story as was necessary.

He had found the lord Jacopo Contarini at his house with a party of friends, he said, and he added at once that they were all men.  Contarini had bidden him speak before them all, but he had whispered his message so that only Contarini should hear it.  After a time he had been allowed to come away.  No—­Contarini had given no direct answer, he had sent no reply; he had only said aloud to his friends that the message he received was expected.  That was all.  The friends who were there?  Zorzi answered with perfect truth that he did not remember to have seen, any of them before.

Beroviero was silent for a while, considering the story.

“He would have thought it discourteous to leave his friends,” he said at last, “or to whisper an answer to a messenger in their presence.  He said that he had expected the message, he will therefore come.”