She had requested me to come to her at midnight, so that we could part without witnesses. I was grateful to her for the affectionate familiarity with which she embraced me. I do not believe there was another society woman in all Venice sufficiently sincere and sympathetic to be willing to repeat the assurance of her love to a man dressed as I was. Tears poured from her eyes when she passed her little white hands over the rough material of my scarlet-lined cape; then she smiled, and, pulling the hood over my head, gazed at me lovingly, and exclaimed that she had never seen me look so handsome, and that she had done very wrong ever to make me dress in any other way. The warmth and sincerity of my thanks, the oaths I took to be faithful to her until death, and never to think of her except to bless her and commend her to God's keeping, touched her deeply. She was not accustomed to being left in that way. "You have a more chivalrous heart," she said to me, "than any of those who bear the title of chevalier." Then she gave way to an outburst of enthusiasm: the independence of my nature, the indifference with which I laid aside luxury and indolence for the hardest of lives, the respect with which I had never failed to treat her when it would have been so easy for me to abuse her weakness for me; all this, she said, raised me far above other men. She threw herself into my arms, almost at my feet, and again begged me not to go away, but to marry her. This outburst was sincere, and, although it did not change my resolution, it made the signora so lovely and so fascinating that I was very near casting my heroism to the winds and taking my reward in that last night for all the sacrifices I had made to my peace of mind. But I had the strength to resist, and to go forth chaste from a love affair which nevertheless had its origin in sensual desire. I took my leave, bathed in her tears, and carrying away, as my sole treasure and trophy, a lock of her lovely fair hair. As I withdrew I went to little Alezia's bed, and softly put aside the curtains to take a last look at her. She at once woke, and did not recognize me at first, for she was frightened; she did not cry out, but simply called her mother in a voice which she tried to keep from trembling. "Signorina," I said, "I am the _Orco_,[3] and I have come to ask you why you pierce the hearts of your dolls with pins." She sat up in bed, and replied, glancing at me with a mischievous expression: "I do it to see if their blood is blue." _Blue blood_, you know, is synonymous with noble in the popular language of Venice. "But they have no blood," I said; "they are not noble!" "They are nobler than you," was her retort, "for their blood isn't black." Black, you know, is the color of the _nicoloti_, the association of boatmen.