gloomy, and that Florentines
were all wicked and gay. That was what Nella had heard. But in a sense
they were free, for they probably did what was good in their own eyes,
as wicked people often do. Life in Venice was to be lived by rule, and
everything that tasted of freedom was repressed by law. If it pleased
women to wear long trains the Council forbade them; if they took refuge
in long sleeves, thrown back over their shoulders, a law was passed
which set a measure and a pattern for all sleeves that might ever be
worn. If a few rich men indulged their fancy in the decoration of their
gondolas, now that riding was out of fashion, the Council immediately
determined that gondolas should be black and that they should only be
gilt and adorned inside. As for freedom, if any one talked of it he was
immediately tortured until he retracted all his errors, and was then
promptly beheaded for fear that he should fall again into the same
mistake. Nella said so, and told hideous tales of the things that had
been done to innocent men in the little room behind the Council chamber
in the Palace. Besides, if one talked of justice, there was Zorzi's case
to prove that there was no justice at all in Venetian law. Marietta
suddenly wished that she were wicked, like the Romans and the
Florentines; and even when she reflected that it was a sin to wish that
one were bad, she was not properly repentant, because she had a very
vague notion of what wickedness really was. Righteousness seemed just
now to consist in being smothered in heavy clothes, in a horribly hot
room, while respectable women of all ages, fat, thin, fair, red-haired,
dark, ugly and handsome, all chattered at her and overwhelmed her with
nauseous flattery.

She thought of that morning in the garden, three days ago, when
something she did not understand had been so near, just before
disappearing for ever. Then her throat tightened and she saw
indistinctly, and her lips were suddenly dry. After that, she remembered
little of what happened on that evening, and by and by she was alone in
her own room without a light, standing at the open window with bare feet
on the cold pavement, and the night breeze stirred her hair and brought
her the scent of the rosemary and lavender, while she tried to listen to
the stars, as if they were speaking to her, and lost herself in her
thoughts for a few moments before going to sleep.

Zorzi was still sitting in the big chair against the wall whe