He stood upright on the high stern of the shadowy craft, himself but a
moving shadow in the starlight, thrown forward now, and now once more
erect, in changing motion; and as he moved the same thought came back
and back again in a sort of halting and painful rhythm. He was out that
night on a bad errand, it said, helping to sell the life of the woman he
loved, and what he was doing could never be undone. Again and again the
words said themselves, the far-off voices said them, the lapping water
took them up and repeated them, the breeze whispered them quickly as it
passed, the oar pronounced them as it creaked softly in the crutch
rowlock, the stars spelled out the sentences in the sky, the lights of
Venice wrote them in the water in broken reflections. He was not alone
any more, for everything in heaven and earth was crying to him to go
back.
That was folly, and he knew it. The master who had trusted him would
drive him out of his house, and out of Venetian land and water, too, if
he chose, and he should never see Marietta again; and she would be
married to Contarini just as if Zorzi had taken the message. Besides, it
was the custom of the world everywhere, so far as he knew, that marriage
and money should be spoken of in the same breath, and there was no
reason why his master should make an exception and be different from
other men.
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