Marietta awoke before sunrise, with a smile on her lips, and as she opened her eyes, the world seemed suddenly gladder than ever before, and her heart beat in time with it.

She threw back the shutters wide to let in the June morning as if it were a beautiful living thing; and it breathed upon her face and caressed her, and took her in its spirit arms, and filled her with itself.
Not a sound broke the stillness, as she looked out, and the glassy waters of the canal reflected delicate tints from the sky, palest green and faintest violet and amber with all the lovely changing colours of the dawn.

By the footway a black barge was moored, piled high with round uncovered baskets of beads, white, blue, deep red and black, waiting to be taken over to Venice where they would be threaded for the East, and the colours stood out in strong contrast with the grey stones, the faint reflections in the water and the tender sky above.

There were flowers on the window-sill, a young rose with opening buds, growing in a red earthen jar, and a pot of lavender just bursting into flower, with a sweet geranium beside it and some rosemary.

Zorzi had planted them all for her, and her serving-woman had helped her to fasten the pots in the window, because it would have been out of the question that any man except her father should enter her room, even when she was not there.
But they were Zorzi's flowers, and she bent down and smelt their fragrance.