"He has only fainted.

I left him on the bench, but you see he must have tried to get up to feed the fire." While he spoke he was lifting Zorzi as well as he could.

Marietta dropped her hands and slowly opened her eyes, and she knew that Zorzi was alive when she saw his face, though it was ghastly and smeared with grey ashes.

But in those few moments she had felt what she could never forget.

It had been as if a vast sword-stroke had severed her body at the waist, and yet left her heart alive.
"Can you help a little ?" asked Pasquale.