For in a few minutes the aspect of his world had changed, and Contarini’s unknown figure filled the future.  Until to-day, he had never seriously thought of Marietta’s marriage, nor of what would happen to him afterwards; but now, he was to be one of the instruments for bringing the marriage about.  He knew well enough what the appointment in Saint Mark’s meant:  Marietta was to have an opportunity of seeing Contarini before accepting him.  Even that was something of a concession in those times, but Beroviero fancied that he loved his child too much to marry her against her will.  This was probably a great match for the glass-worker’s daughter, however, and she would not refuse it.  Contarini had never seen her either; he might have heard that she was a pretty girl, but there were famous beauties in Venice, and if he wanted Marietta Beroviero it could only be for her dowry.  The marriage was therefore a mere bargain between the two men, in which a name was bartered for a fortune and a fortune for a name.  Zorzi saw how absurd it was to suppose that Marietta could care for a man whom she had never even seen; and worse than that, he guessed in a flash of loving intuition how wretchedly unhappy she might be with him, and he hated and despised the errand he was to perform.  The future seemed to reveal itself to him with the long martyrdom of the woman he loved, and he felt an almost irresistible desire to go to her and implore her to refuse to be sold.

Nine-tenths of the marriages he had ever heard of in Murano or Venice had been made in this way, and in a moment’s reflection he realised the folly of appealing even to the girl herself, who doubtless looked upon the whole proceeding as perfectly natural.  She had of course expected such an event ever since she had been a child, she was prepared to accept it, and she only hoped that her husband might turn out to be young, handsome and noble, since she did not want money.  A moment later, Zorzi included all marriageable young women in one sweeping condemnation:  they were all hard-hearted, mercenary, vain, deceitful—­anything that suggested itself to his headlong resentment.  Art was the only thing worth living and dying for; the world was full of women, and they were all alike, old, young, ugly, handsome—­all a pack of heartless jades; but art was one, beautiful, true, deathless and unchanging.

He looked up from the furnace door, and he felt the blood rush to his face.  Marietta was standing near and watching him with her strangely veiled eyes.

“Poor Zorzi!” she exclaimed in a soft voice.  “How hot you look!”

He did not remember that he had ever cared a straw whether any one noticed that he was hot or not, until that moment; but for some complicated reason connected with his own thoughts the remark stung him like an insult, and fully confirmed his recent verdict concerning women in general and their total lack of all human kindness where men were concerned.  He rose to his feet suddenly and turned away without a word.