“I assure you that you are mistaken,” he said in a soothing tone.  “I wish for your friendship with all my heart!  Only, when you ask me—­”

“Oh, go away!  For heaven’s sake go away!” cried Marietta, almost choking, and turning her face quite away, so that he could only see the back of her head.

At the same time, she tapped the ground impatiently with her foot, and to make matters worse, the little basket of beads began to slip off her knees at the same moment.  She caught at it desperately, trying not to look round and half blinded by her tears, but she missed it, and but for Zorzi it would have fallen.  He put it into her hands very gently, but she was not in the least grateful.

“Oh, please go away!” she repeated.  “Can you not understand?”

He did not understand, but he obeyed her and turned away, very grave, very much puzzled by this new development of affairs, and sincerely wishing that some wise familiar spirit would whisper the explanation in his ear, since he could not possibly consult any living person.

She heard him go and she listened for the shutting of the laboratory door.  Then she knew that she was quite alone in the garden, and she let the tears flow as they would, bending her head till it touched the trunk of the tree, and they wet the smooth bark and ran down to the dry earth.

Zorzi went in, and began to tend the fire as usual, until it should please the master to give him other orders.  Old Beroviero was sitting in the big chair in which he sometimes rested himself, his elbow on one of its arms, and his hand grasping his beard below his chin.

“Zorzi,” he said at last, “I have seen that man before.”

Zorzi looked at him, expecting more, but for some time Beroviero said nothing.  The young man selected his pieces of beech wood, laying them ready before the little opening just above the floor.

“It is very strange,” said Beroviero at last.  “He seems to be a rich merchant now, but I am almost quite sure that I saw him in Naples.”

“Did you know him there, sir?” asked Zorzi.

“No,” answered his master thoughtfully.  “I saw him in a cart with his hands tied behind him, on his way to be hanged.”

“He looks as if one hanging would not be enough for him,” observed Zorzi.

Beroviero was silent for a moment.  Then he laughed, and he laughed very rarely.

“Yes,” he said.  “It is not a face one could forget easily,” he added.

Then he rose and went back to his table.

CHAPTER VII