ch a deep
stain upon the pavement that one would believe the marble itself must be
dyed with unchanging color.

"We have found it together," said Marietta.

Zorzi looked from the glass to her face, close by his, and their eyes
met for a moment in the strange glow and it was as if they knew each
other in another world.

"Do not let the red light fall on your faces," said Nella, crossing
herself. "It is too much like blood--good health to you," she added
quickly for fear of evil.

Marietta lowered her hand and turned the piece of glass sideways, to see
how it would look.

"What shall we do with it?" she asked. "It must not be left any longer
in the crucible."

"No. It ought to be taken out at once. Such a colour must be kept for
church windows. If I were able to stand, I would make most of it into
cylinders and cut them while hot. There are men who can do it, in the
glass-house. But the master does not want them here."

"We had better let the fires go out," said Marietta. "It will cool in
the crucible as it is."

"I would give anything to have that crucible empty, or an empty one in
the place," answered Zorzi. "This is a great discovery, but it is not
exactly what the master expected. I have an idea of my own, which I
should like to try."

"Then we must empty the crucible. There is no other way. The glass will
keep its colour, whatever shape we give it. Is there much of it?"

"There may be twenty or thirty pounds' weight," answered Zorzi. "No one
can tell."

Nell listened in mute surprise. She had never seen Marietta with old
Beroviero, and she was amazed to hear her young mistress talking about
the processes of glass-making, about crucibles and cylinders and
ingredients as familiarly as of domestic things. She suddenly began to
imagine that old Beroviero, who was probably a magician and an
alchemist, had taught his daughter the same dangerous knowledge, and she
felt a sort of awe before the two young people who knew such a vast deal
which she herself could never know.

She asked herself what was to become of this wonderful girl, half woman
and half enchantress, who brought the colour of the saints' blood out of
the white flames, and understood as much as men did of the art which was
almost all made up of secrets. What would happen when she was the wife
of Jacopo Contarini, shut up in a splendid Venetian palace where there
were no glass furnaces to amuse her? At first she would grow pale,
thought Nella, b