others would have said to himself that no promise could bind him to
anything more than the performance of an action, or the abstention from
one, and that the right of dreaming was his own for ever. But Zorzi
judged differently. He had a sensitiveness that was rather manly than
masculine; he had scruples of which he was not ashamed, but which most
men would laugh at; he had delicacies of conscience in his most private
thoughts such as would have been more natural in a cloistered nun,
living in ignorance of the world, than in a waif who had faced it at its
worst, and almost from childhood. Innocent as his dream had been, he
resolved to part with it, and never to dream it again. He was glad that
Marietta had taken back the rose he had picked up yesterday; if she had
not, he would have forced himself to throw it away, and that would have
hurt him.

So he began his day in a melancholy mood, as having buried out of sight
for ever something that was very dear to him. In time, his love of his
art would fill the place of the other love, but on this first day he
went about in silence, with hungry eyes and tightened lips, like a man
who is starving and is too proud to ask a charity.

He waited for Beroviero at the door of his house, as he did every
morning, to attend him to the laboratory. The old man looked at him
inquiringly, and Zorzi bent his head a little to explain that he had
done what had been required of him, and he followed his master across
the wooden bridge. When they were alone in the laboratory, he told as
much of his story as was necessary.

He had found the lord Jacopo Contarini at his house with a party of
friends, he said, and he added at once that they were all men. Contarini
had bidden him speak before them all, but he had whispered his message