Each time she came he asked her about Marietta, in a rather formal tone, as was becoming when he spoke of his master's daughter, but hoping that Nella might have some message to deliver, and he was more and more disappointed as he realised that Marietta did not mean to send him any.

She had gone away on that morning with a sort of intimation that she would come back every day, but Nella did not so much as hint that she ever meant to come back at all.
Zorzi went about on crutches, swinging his helpless foot as he walked, for it still hurt him when he put it to the ground.

He was pale and thin, both from pain and from living shut up almost all day in the close atmosphere of the laboratory.

For a change, he began to come out into the little garden, sometimes walking up and down on his crutches for a few minutes, and then sitting down to rest on the bench under the plane-tree, where Marietta had so often sat.

Pasquale came and talked with him sometimes, but Zorzi never went to the porter's lodge.
He felt that if he got as far as that he should inevitably open the door and look up at Marietta's window, and he would not do it, for he was hurt by her apparent indifference, after having allowed him to hold her hand in his.