“I know it well,” said Marietta.  “I have been perfectly happy, talking to you under the plane-tree, your hand in mine, and mine in yours, our eyes in each other’s eyes, our hearts one heart!  And then, all at once, there was Nella, standing at the foot of my bed with a big dish in her hands, laughing at me because I had been sleeping so soundly!  Oh, sometimes I could kill her for waking me!”

She drew his face to hers, with a little laugh that broke off short.  For a kiss is a grave matter.

“How much time we have wasted in all these months!” she said presently.  “Why would you never understand?”

“How could I guess that you could ever love me?” Zorzi asked.

“I guessed that you loved me,” objected Marietta.  “At least,” she added, correcting herself, “I was quite sure of it for a little while.  Then I did not believe it all.  If I had believed it quite, they should never have betrothed me to Jacopo Contarini!”

The name recalled all realities to Zorzi, though she spoke it very carelessly, almost with scorn.  Zorzi sighed and looked up at last, and stared at the wall opposite.

“What is it?” asked Marietta quickly.  “Why do you sigh?”

“There is reason enough.  Are you not betrothed to him, as you say?”

Marietta straightened herself suddenly, and made him look at her.  A quick light was in her eyes, as she spoke.

“Do you know what you are saying?  Do you think that if I meant to marry Messer Jacopo, I should be here now, that I should let you hold me in your arms, that I would kiss you?  Do you really believe that?”

“I could not believe it,” Zorzi answered.  “And yet—­”

“And yet you almost do!” she cried.  “What more do you need, to know that I love you, with all my heart and soul and will, and that I mean to be your wife, come what may?”

“How is it possible?” asked Zorzi almost disconsolately.  “How could you ever marry me?  What am I, after all, compared with you?  I am not even a Venetian!  I am a stranger, a waif, a man with neither name nor fortune!  And I am half a cripple, lame for life!  How can you marry me?  At the first word of such a thing your father will join his son against me, I shall be thrown into prison on some false charge and shall never come out again, unless it be to be hanged for some crime I never committed.”

“There is a very simple way of preventing all those dreadful things,” answered Marietta.

“I wish I could find it.”

“Take me with you,” she said calmly.

Zorzi looked at her in dumb surprise, for she could not have said anything which he had expected less.

“Listen to me,” she continued.  “You cannot stay here—­or rather, you shall not, for I will not let you.  No, you need not smile and shake your head, for I will find some means of making you go.”

“You will find that hard, dear love, for that is the only thing I will not do for you.”