ta watched the men, Zorzi was there among them,
coming out as they went in. He must have risen early, she thought, for
she did not know that he had slept in the laboratory. He looked pale and
thin as he flattened himself against the door-post to let a workman
pass, and then slipped out himself. No one greeted him, even by a nod.
Marietta knew that they hated him because he was in her father's
confidence; and somehow, instead of pitying him, she was glad.

It seemed natural that he should not be one of them, that he should pass
them with quiet indifference and that they should feel for him the
instinctive dislike which most inferiors feel for those above them.
Doubtless, they looked down upon him, or told themselves that they did;
but in their hearts they knew that a man with such a face was born to be
their teacher and their master, and the girl was proud of him. He
treated them with more civility than they bestowed on him, but it was
the courtesy of a superior who would not assert himself, who would scorn
to thrust himself forward or in any way to claim what was his by right,
if it were not freely offered. Marietta drew back a little, so that she
could just see him between the flowers, without being seen.

He stood still, looking down at the canal till the last of the men had
passed in. Then, before he went on, he raised his eyes slowly to
Marietta's window, not guessing that her own were answering his from
behind the rosemary and the geranium. His pale face was very sad and
thoughtful as he looked up. She had never seen him look so tired. The
porter had shut the door, which he never allowed to remain open one
moment longer than was absolutely necessary, and Zorzi stood quite alone
on the footway. As he looked, his face softened and grew so tender that
the girl who watched him unseen stretched out her arms towards him with
unconscious yearning, and her heart beat very fast, so that she felt the
pulses in her throat almost choking her; yet her face was pale and her
soft lips were dry and cold. For it was not all happiness that she
felt; there was a sweet mysterious pain with it, which was nowhere, and
yet all through her, that was weakness and yet might turn to strength, a
hunger of longing for something dear and unknown and divine, without
which all else was an empty shadow. Then her eyes opened to him, as he
had never seen them, blue as the depth of sapphires and dewy with love
mists of youth's early spring; it was im