“I feel perfectly well,” said Zorzi.

“Indeed you are not!” answered Marietta, energetically.  “If you were perfectly well you would be on your feet, doing your work yourself.  Why will you not tell me?”

“I mean, I have no pain,” said Zorzi.

“You had great pain just now, when you tried to move,” retorted Marietta.  “You know it.  Why do you try to deceive me?  Do you think I cannot see it in your face?”

“It is nothing.  It comes now and then, and goes away again almost at once.”

Marietta had come close to him while she was speaking.  One hand hung by her side within his reach.  He longed to take it, with such a longing as he had never felt for anything in his life; he resisted with all the strength he had left.  But he remembered that he had held her hand in his yesterday, and the memory was a force in itself, outside of him, drawing him in spite of himself, lifting his arm when he commanded it to lie still.  His eyes could not take themselves from the beautiful white fingers, so delicately curved as they hung down, so softly shaded to pale rose colour at their tapering tips.  She stood quite still, looking down at his bent head.

“You would not refuse my friendship, now,” she said, in a low voice, so low that when she had spoken she doubted whether he could have understood.

He took her hand then, for he had no resistance left, and she let him take it, and did not blush.  He held it in both his own and silently drew it to him, till he was pressing it to his heart as he had never hoped to do.

“You are too good to me,” he said, scarcely knowing that he pronounced the words.

Nella passed the window, coming back from her errand.  Instantly Marietta drew her hand away, and when the serving-woman entered she was speaking to Zorzi in the most natural tone in the world.

“Is the testing plate quite clean?” she asked, and she was already beside it.

Zorzi looked at her with amazement.  She had almost been seen with her hand in his, a catastrophe which he supposed would have entailed the most serious consequences; yet there she was, perfectly unconcerned and not even faintly blushing, and she had at once pretended that they had been talking about the glass.

“Yes—­I believe it is clean,” he answered, almost hesitating.  “I cleaned it yesterday morning.”

Nella had brought the copper ladle.  There were always several in the glass-works for making tests.  Marietta took it and went to the furnace, while Nella watched her, in great fear lest she should burn herself.  But the young girl was in no danger, for she had spent half her life in the laboratory and the garden, watching her father.  She wrapped the wet cloth round her hand and held the ladle by the end.

“We will begin with the one on the right,” she said, thrusting the instrument through the aperture.

Bringing it out with some glass in it, she supported it with both hands as she went quickly to the iron table, and she instantly poured out the stuff and began to watch it.