"Why do you sigh?"
"There is reason enough. Are you not betrothed to him, as you say?"
Marietta straightened herself suddenly, and made him look at her. A
quick light was in her eyes, as she spoke.
"Do you know what you are saying? Do you think that if I meant to marry
Messer Jacopo, I should be here now, that I should let you hold me in
your arms, that I would kiss you? Do you really believe that?"
"I could not believe it," Zorzi answered. "And yet--"
"And yet you almost do!" she cried. "What more do you need, to know that
I love you, with all my heart and soul and will, and that I mean to be
your wife, come what may?"
"How is it possible?" asked Zorzi almost disconsolately. "How could you
ever marry me? What am I, after all, compared with you? I am not even a
Venetian! I am a stranger, a waif, a man with neither name nor fortune!
And I am half a cripple, lame for life! How can you marry me? At the
first word of such a thing your father will join his son against me, I
shall be thrown into prison on some false charge and shall never come
out again, unless it be to be hanged for some crime I never committed."
"There is a very simple way of preventing all those dreadful things,"
answered Marietta.
"I wish I could find it.
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