what he had done
yesterday. He saw Messer Zuan Venier--"

Zorzi showed his surprise.

"Pasquale told my father that he had been here to see you. Very well,
this Messer Zuan advised that if you could be found, you should be
persuaded to go before the tribunal of the Ten of your own free will, to
tell your story. And he promised to use all his influence and that of
all his friends in your favour."

"They will not change the law for me," Zorzi replied, in a hopeless
way.

"If they could hear you, they would make a special decree," said
Marietta. "You could tell them your story, you could even show them some
of the beautiful things you have made. They would understand that you
are a great artist. After all, my father says that one of their most
especial duties is to deal with everything that concerns Murano and the
glass-works. Do you think that they will banish you, now that you have a
secret of your own, and can injure us all by setting up a furnace
somewhere else? There is no sense in that! And if you go of your own
free will, they will hear you kindly, I think. But if you stay here,
they will find you in the end, and they will be very angry then, because
you will have been hiding from them."

"You are wise," Zorzi answered. "You are very wise."

"No, I love you."

She spoke softly and glanced at the open window, and then at his face.

"Truly?"

He smiled happily as he whispered his question in one word, and he was
resting a hand on the trunk of the tree, just as he had been standing on
the day she remembered so well.

"Ah, you know it now!" she answered, with bright and trusting eyes.

"One may know a song well, and yet long to hear it again and again."

"But one cannot be always singing it oneself," she said.

"I could never make it ring as sweetly as you," Zorzi answered.

"Try it! I am tired of hearing my voice--"

"But I am not! There is no voice like it in the world. I shall never
care to hear another, as long as I live, nor any other song, nor any
other words. And when you are weary of saying them, I shall just say
them over in my heart, 'She loves me, she loves me,'--all day long."

"Which is better," Marietta asked, "to love, or to know that you are
loved?"

"The two thoughts are like soul and body," Zorzi answered. "You must not
part them."

"I never have, since I have known the truth, and never shall again."

Then they were silent for a while, but they hardly knew it, for the
world was