"Why not bring your blow-pipe with you and show the workmen as well as me what you can do ?" Zorzi hesitated.

It suddenly occurred to him that this might be a decisive moment in his life, in which the future would depend on the decision he made.

In all the years since he had been with Beroviero he had never worked at one of the great furnaces among the other men.
"I daresay your sense of responsibility is so great that you do not like to leave the laboratory, even for half an hour," said Giovanni scornfully.

"But you have to go home at night." "I sleep here," answered Zorzi.
"Indeed ?" Giovanni was surprised.

"I see that your objections are insuperable," he added with a laugh.
Zorzi was in one of those moods in which a man feels that he has nothing to lose.