She had not even asked through Nella what had become of the beautiful glass.

What he pretended to say to himself was that it would be very wrong to go and stand outside the glass-house, where the porter would certainly see him, and where he might be seen by any one else, staring at the window of his master's daughter's room on the other side of the canal.

But what he really felt was that Marietta had treated him capriciously and that if he had a particle of self-respect he must show her that he did not care.

For if Marietta was very like other carefully brought up girls of her age, Zorzi was nothing more than a boy where love was concerned, and like many boys who have struggled for existence in a more or less corrupt world, he had heard much more of the faithlessness and caprices of women in general than of the sensitiveness and delicate timidity of innocent young girls.
Marietta was his perfect ideal, the most exquisite, the most beautiful and the most lovable creature ever endowed with form and sent into the world by the powers of good.

He believed all this in his heart, with the certainty of absolute knowledge.