Why should she suddenly feel that she was going to cry?
It had seemed so ridiculous in poor Nella that morning.

Yet there was a most unmistakable something in her throat, which frightened her.

It would be dreadful if she should burst into tears over her beads before Zorzi's eyes.

She tried to gulp the something: down, and suddenly, as she bent over the basket, she saw the beautiful, hateful drops falling fast upon the little dry glass things; and even then, in her shame at being seen, she wondered why the beads looked, bigger through the glistening tears--she remembered afterwards how they looked, so she must have noticed them at the time.
Zorzi knew too little of women to have any idea of what he ought to do under the circumstances.

He did not know whether to turn his back or to go away, so he stood still and looked at her, which was the very worst thing he could have done.