“It seems quite natural to you that I should betray your father’s confidence.  I do not see much difference between taking it for granted that a man is a traitor and offering him money to act as one.”

“No,” said Marietta, smelling the rose from time to time as she spoke, “there is not much difference.  But I did not mean to hurt your feelings.”

“You did not realise that I could have any, I fancy,” retorted Zorzi, still angry.

“Perhaps I did not understand that you would consider what my father was telling you in the same light as a secret of the art,” said Marietta slowly, “nor that you would look upon what I meant to offer you as a bribe.  The matter concerned me, did it not?”

“Your name was not spoken.  I have fastened the branch.  Is there anything else for me to do?”

“Have you no curiosity to know what I would have given you?” asked Marietta.

“I should be ashamed to want anything at such a price,” returned Zorzi proudly.

“You hold your honour high, even in trifles.”

“It is all I have—­my honour and my art.”

“You care for nothing else?  Nothing else in the whole world?”

“Nothing,” said Zorzi.

“You must be very lonely in your thoughts,” she said, and turned away.

As she went slowly along the path her hand hung by her side, and the rose she held fell from her fingers.  Following her at a short distance, on his way back to the laboratory, Zorzi stooped and picked up the flower, not thinking that she would turn her head.  But at that moment she had reached the door, and she looked back and saw what he had done.  She stood still and held out her hand, expecting him to come up with her.

“My rose!” she exclaimed, as if surprised.  “Give it back to me.”

Zorzi gave it to her, and the colour came to his face a second time.  She fastened it in her bodice, looking down at it as she did so.

“I am so fond of roses,” she said, smiling a little.  “Are you?”

“I planted all those you have here,” he answered.

“Yes—­I know.”

She looked up as she spoke, and met his eyes, and all at once she laughed, not unkindly, nor as if at him, nor at what he had said, but quietly and happily, as women do when they have got what they want.  Zorzi did not understand.

“You are gay,” he said coldly.

“Do you wonder?” she asked.  “If you knew what I know, you would understand.”

“But I do not.”

Zorzi went back to his furnace, Marietta exchanged a few words with her father and left the room again to go home.