"Heaven knows what has happened to the thing," Zorzi answered. "It has been there since yesterday morning. For all I know, it may have melted by this time. It may affect the glass, too."
"Where can I get another?" asked Marietta, anxious to begin.
Zorzi made an instinctive motion to rise. It hurt him badly and he bit his lip.
"I forgot," he said. "Pasquale can get another ladle from the main glass-house."
"Go and call Pasquale, Nella," said Marietta at once. "Ask him to get a copper ladle."
Nella went out into the garden, leaving the two together. Marietta was standing between the chair and the furnace, two or three steps from Zorzi. It was very hot in the big room, for the window was still shut.
"Tell me how you really feel," Marietta said, almost at once.
Every woman who loves a man and is anxious about him is sure that if she can be alone with him for a moment, he will tell her the truth about his condition. The experience of thousands of years has not taught women that if there is one person in the world from whom a man will try to conceal his ills and aches, it is the woman he loves, because he would rather suffer everything than give her pain.
"I feel perfectly well," said Zorzi.
"Indeed you are not!" answered Marietta, energetically. "If you were perfectly well you would be on your feet, doing your work yourself. Why will you not tell me?"