“You seem glad to see us after all,” she said.  “Yet you protested that I should not come to-day!”

“I cannot help it,” he answered.

“Ah, but if you had been with us just now!” Nella began, still frightened.

But Marietta would not let her go on.

“Hold your tongue, Nella,” she said, with a little laugh.  “You should know better than to trouble a sick man’s fancy with such stories.”

Nella understood that Zorzi was not to know, and she began examining the foot, to make sure that the bandages had not been displaced during the night.

“To-morrow I will change them,” she said.  “It is not like a scald.  The glass has burned you like red-hot iron, and the wound will heal quickly.”

“If you will tell me which crucible to try,” said Marietta, “I will make the tests for you.  Then we can move the table to your side and you can prepare the new ingredients according to the writing.”

Pasquale had left them, seeing that he was not wanted.

“I fear it is of little use,” answered Zorzi, despondently.  “Of course, the master is very wise, but it seems to me that he has added so much, from time to time, to the original mixture, and so much has been taken away, as to make it all very uncertain.”

“I daresay,” assented Marietta.  “For some time I have thought so.  But we must carry out his wishes to the letter, else he will always believe that the experiments might have succeeded if he had stayed here.”

“Of course,” said Zorzi.  “We should make tests of all three crucibles to-day, if it is only to make more room for the things that are to be put in.”

“Where is the copper ladle?” asked Marietta.  “I do not see it in its place.”

“I have none—­I had forgotten.  Your brother came here yesterday morning, and wanted to try the glass himself in spite of me.  I knocked the ladle out of his hand and it fell through into the crucible.”

“That was like you,” said Marietta.  “I am glad you did it.”

“Heaven knows what has happened to the thing,” Zorzi answered.  “It has been there since yesterday morning.  For all I know, it may have melted by this time.  It may affect the glass, too.”

“Where can I get another?” asked Marietta, anxious to begin.

Zorzi made an instinctive motion to rise.  It hurt him badly and he bit his lip.

“I forgot,” he said.  “Pasquale can get another ladle from the main glass-house.”

“Go and call Pasquale, Nella,” said Marietta at once.  “Ask him to get a copper ladle.”

Nella went out into the garden, leaving the two together.  Marietta was standing between the chair and the furnace, two or three steps from Zorzi.  It was very hot in the big room, for the window was still shut.

“Tell me how you really feel,” Marietta said, almost at once.

Every woman who loves a man and is anxious about him is sure that if she can be alone with him for a moment, he will tell her the truth about his condition.  The experience of thousands of years has not taught women that if there is one person in the world from whom a man will try to conceal his ills and aches, it is the woman he loves, because he would rather suffer everything than give her pain.