Marietta looked back at Zorzi from the door, and his eyes were following her.  She bent her head gravely and went out, followed by the others, and he was alone again.  But it was very different now.  The spasms of pain came back now and then, but there was rest between them, for there was a potent anodyne in the balsam with which Nella had soaked the first dressing.  Of all possible hurts, the pain from burning is the most acute and lasting, and the wise little woman, who sometimes seemed so foolish, had done all that science could have done for Zorzi, even at a much later day.  He could think connectedly now, he had been able to talk; had it been possible for him to stand, he might even have gone on for a time with the preparations for the next experiment.  Yet he felt an instinctive certainty that he was to be lame for life.

He was not thinking of the experiments just then; he could think of nothing but Marietta.  Four or five days had passed since he had talked with her in the garden, and she was now formally promised to Jacopo Contarini.  He wondered why she had come with Nella, and he remembered her earnest offer of friendship.  She meant to show him that she was still in earnest, he supposed.  It had been perfect happiness to feel her cool young hand on his forehead, to press it in his own.  No one could take that from him, as long as he lived.  He remembered it through the horrible pain it had soothed, and it was better than the touch of an angel, for it was the touch of a loving woman.  But he did not know that, and be fancied that if she had ever guessed that he loved her, she would not have come to him now.  She would feel that the mere thought in his heart was an offence.  And besides, she was to marry Contarini, and she was not of the kind that would promise to marry one man and yet encourage love in another.  It was well, thought Zorzi, that she had never suspected the truth.

When Marietta reached her room again she listened patiently to Nella’s scolding and warning, for she did not hear a word the good woman said to her.  Nella brushed the dust from the silk mantle and from Marietta’s white skirt very industriously, lest it should betray the secret to Giovanni or any other member of the household.  For they had escaped being seen, even when they came back.

Nella scolded on in a little sing-song voice, with many rising inflections.  In her whole life, she said, she had never connived at anything more utterly shameless than this!  She was humble, indeed, and of no account in the world, but if she had run out in the middle of the day to visit a young man when she was betrothed to her poor Vito, blessed soul, and the Lord remember him, her poor Vito would have gone to her father, might the Lord refresh his soul, and would have said, “What ways are these?  Do you think I will marry a girl who runs about in this fashion?” That was what Vito would have said.  And he would have said, “Give me back the gold things I gave your daughter, and let me go and find a wife who does not run about the city.”  And it would have been well said.  Did Marietta suppose that an educated person like the lord Jacopo Contarini would be less particular about his bride’s manners than that good soul Vito?  Not that Vito had been ignorant.  Nella should have liked any one to dare to say that she had married an ignorant man!  And so forth.  And so on.