Chapter 9

A month had passed, and yet, to all outward appearance, Zeno's manner of living had undergone no change. He rose early and bathed in the Golden Horn on fine days. He attended to his business in the morning, and dined with Sebastian Polo twice a week, but generally at home on the remaining days; and he rode out in the afternoon with a single running footman, or stayed indoors if it rained. Even his own servants and slaves hardly noticed any change in his habits, and only observed that he often looked preoccupied, and sometimes sat on his balcony for an hour without moving, his eyes fixed on the towers of the Blachern� palace.

They did not know how much time he spent with his beautiful Greek slave; and they found that the two little maids, Yulia and Lucilla, were not inclined to gossip when they came downstairs on an errand. Omobono probably knew a good deal, but he kept it to himself, and stored the fruits of his lively curiosity to enjoy alone the delicious sensation of the miser gloating over his useless gold. On the whole, therefore, life in the Venetian merchant's house had gone on much as usual for a whole month after Zo� had fired a train which was destined to produce momentous results when it reached the mine at last.

Zeno saw her every day now, and often twice, and she had become a part of his life, and necessary to him; though he did not believe that he was in love with her, any more than she would have admitted that she loved him.

For each was possessed by one dominant thought; and it chanced, as it rarely chances in real life, that one deed, if it could be performed, would satisfy the hopes of both. Zeno, born patriot and leader, saw that the whole influence of his country in the East was at stake in the matter of Tenedos; Zo� thirsted to revenge the death of Michael Rhangab�, her adopted father and the idol of her childhood.

If the imprisoned Emperor Johannes could be delivered from the Amena tower, both would certainly obtain what they most desired. Johannes would give Tenedos to Venice, in gratitude for his liberty, and the people of Constantinople would probably tear Andronicus to ribands in the Hippodrome, on the very spot where Rhangab� had suffered.

They would rally round their lawful sovereign if he could only be got out of the precincts of the palace, where the usurper was strongly guarded by his foreign mercenaries, mostly Circassians, Mingrelians, Avars, and Slavonians. The people would not rise of themselves to storm Blachern�, nor would the Greek troops revolt of their own accord; but as they all feared the soldiers of the foreign legion, they hated them and their master Andronicus, and the presence of Johannes amongst them would restore their courage and make the issue certain.

Such a leader as Carlo Zeno might indeed have successfully besieged Andronicus in his palace; but he knew, and every man and woman in Constantinople knew well enough, that Andronicus would make an end of his father and of his two younger brothers in prison, at the first sign of a revolution, so that there might be no lawful heir to the throne left alive but he himself.

Therefore it was the first and the chief object of the patriots to bring Johannes secretly from his place of confinement to the heart of the city, or to one of the islands, beyond the reach of danger, till the revolution should be over and his son a prisoner in his stead; though it was much more probable that the latter would be summarily put to death as a traitor.

All this Zeno had understood before Zo� had spoken to him about it; but he had not known that the Genoese had demanded Tenedos of Andronicus as the price of their protection against the Turks; for the negotiations had been kept very secret, and at first Carlo had not believed the girl, and had deemed that the tale might be a pure invention.

He had come again to see her on the following day, and again he had vainly tried to find out who she was, and in what great Fanariote house she had been brought up. It was impossible to get a word from her on this subject; and she warned him that what she had told him must not be repeated in the hearing of any Genoese, nor of any one connected with the Court. The Genoese meant that no one should know of the treaty till it was carried out, and until Tenedos was theirs; for the place was very strong, as they afterwards found by experience, and Andronicus needed their help too much to risk losing their favour by an indiscretion.

These injunctions of silence made Carlo still more doubtful as to the veracity of Zo�'s story, and he frankly told her so and demanded proof; but she only answered as she had at first.

'If it is not true,' she said, 'brand me in the forehead, as they brand thieves, and sell me in the open market.'

And again he was angry, and swore that he would do so by her indeed if the story was a lie; but she smiled confidently, and nodded her assent.

'If you do not save the Emperor,' she said, 'you Venetians will be driven out of Constantinople before many months; and if Genoa once holds Tenedos how shall you ever again sail up the Dardanelles?'

Many a time she had heard Michael Rhangab� say as much to his friends, and she knew that it was wisdom. So did Zeno, and he wondered at the knowledge of his bought slave. So he came and went, turning over the great question in his brain; and she awaited his coming gladly, because she saw that he was roused, and because the longing for just revenge was uppermost in her thoughts. Thus were the two drawn together more and more, fate helping. Yet he told her nothing of the steps he took so quickly after he had once made up his mind to act.

She no longer asked him what he meant to do with her; she did not again send for the secretary to complain that her existence was dull; she no longer was impatient with her maids; she seemed perfectly satisfied with her existence.

She went out when she pleased to go, in the beautiful skiff, in charge of Omobono, and always with one of the girls; and she sat in the deep cushioned seat as the great ladies did when they were rowed to the Sweet Waters, and as she had sat many times in old days, beside Kyr�a Agatha. The secretary sat on a little movable seat in the waist of the boat, which was built almost exactly like a modern Venetian gondola without the hood, and the slave-girl sat in the bottom at her mistress's feet. Zo�, the adopted daughter of the Protosparthos, had gone abroad with uncovered face, but Arethusa, the slave, was closely veiled, though that was not the general custom. And often, as she glided along in the spring afternoons, she passed people she had known only a year ago, or a little more, who wondered why she hid her features; or told each other, as was more or less true, that she was some handsome white slave, whose jealous master would not suffer her beauty to be seen. For it was clear that Omobono was only a respectable elderly person placed in charge of her.

The two generally conversed in Latin, and the secretary told her of his search for Kyr�a Agatha, the children, and old Nectaria. She had never shown him her face since she had been a slave, and she believed that he did not connect her with the ragged girl he had seen bending over the sick woman's bed in the beggars' quarter. She had enjoined upon him the greatest discretion in case he found the little family, and with Omobono such an injunction was quite unnecessary, for outward discretion is the characteristic quality of curiosity, which is inwardly the least discreet of failings. People who look through keyholes, listen behind curtains, and read other people's letters are generally the last to talk of what they learn in that way.

As yet, the secretary's search had been fruitless, but he had long ago made up his mind that Zo� was Kyr�a Agatha's daughter. The bandy-legged sacristan of Saint Bacchus had helped him to this conclusion by informing him that Rustan Karaboghazji had not come to perform his devotions in the church for some time; never, in fact, since that Friday afternoon on which Omobono had inquired after him.

The secretary had searched the beggars' quarter in vain. He remembered the ruined house very well, and the crazy shutters with bits of rain-bleached string tied to them for fastenings. There were people living in it, but they were not the same beggars; it was now inhabited by the chief physician of the beggars himself, whose business it was to prepare misery for the public eye, at fixed rates. For among those who were really starving there lived a small tribe of professional paupers, who displayed the horrors of their loathsome diseases at the doors of the churches all over Constantinople. The physician was skilful in his way, and though he preferred a real cripple, or a real sore for his art to improve upon, he could produce the semblance of either on sound limbs and a whole skin, though the process was expensive. Yet that increased cost was balanced by the ability of his healthy patients to go alone to a great distance, and thus to vary the scene of their industry. They thus picked up the charity which should have reached the real poor, most of whom could hardly crawl as far as the great thoroughfares more than once or twice a week, at the risk of their lives. The sham beggar always has a marvellous power of covering the ground, but you must generally seek the real one in the lair where he is dying. Omobono had learnt much about beggars which he had not known before then, and he had found no trace whatever of the people whom he was seeking.

They seemed very far away when Zo� thought of them. She wondered whether any of them missed her, except Nectaria, now that they had warm clothes and plenty to eat. The sacrifice had been very terrible at first,—it did not seem so now; and she knew that on that very afternoon when she went home after being out in the boat, she would listen for Zeno's footstep in the vestibule, and think the time long till he came.

But Omobono had gathered a good deal of information about her from his acquaintance, the sacristan, whom he strongly suspected of being in league with Rustan to inform him when there was anything worth buying in the beggars' quarter; for the Bokharian was a busy man, and had no time to spend in searching for unusual merchandise, nor, when there was any to be had, would it have been to his advantage to be seen often in its neighborhood. So he paid the sacristan to quarter the ground continually for him, while he was engaged elsewhere. It is to the credit of Rustan's splendid business intelligence that the system he employed has not been improved on in five hundred years; for when the modern slave-dealers make their annual journeys to the centres of supply they find everything ready for them, like any other commercial traveller.

Having understood Rustan's mode of procedure, Omobono had extracted from the sacristan such information as the latter possessed about Zo� and Kyr�a Agatha, but that was not very much after all. They had lived three or four weeks in the ruined house, or perhaps six; he could not remember exactly. At first they all came to the church, but they had sold their miserable clothes and their wretched belongings. The last time the girl had come, she had been alone, and she had worn a blanket over her shoulders to keep her warm. That had been at dusk. Then Rustan had bought her, and soon afterwards they must have gone away, since the beggars' physician was now installed in the house. Why should the sacristan take any interest in them? They were gone, and Constantinople was a vast city. No, the woman had not died, for he would have known it. When people died they were buried, even if they had starved to death in the beggars' quarter.

Zo� thanked Omobono for the information, and begged him to continue her search. He wondered why she did not burst into tears, and concluded that she was either quite heartless, or was in love with Zeno, or both. He inclined to the latter theory. Love, he told himself with all the conviction of middle-aged inexperience, was a selfish passion. Zo� loved Zeno, and did not care what had become of her mother.

Besides, he knew that she was jealous. She had heard of Giustina, and was determined to see her. She insisted that the boat should keep to the left, going up the Golden Horn, and she made the secretary point out Sebastian Polo's dwelling. It was a small palace, a hundred yards below the gardens of Blachern�, and it had marble steps, like those at Zeno's house. A girl with dyed hair sat in the shade in an upper balcony; her hair was red auburn, like that of the Venetian women, and her face was white, but that was all Zo� could see. She wished she had a hawk's eyes. Omobono said it might be Giustina, but as the latter had many friends, it might also be one of them, for most Venetian women had hair of that colour.

Farther up, they neared Blachern�, and came first to the great Amena tower, of which the foundations stood on an escarped pier in the water. Zo� looked up, trying to guess the height of the upper windows from the water, but she had no experience, and they were very high—perhaps a hundred palms, perhaps fifty—Zeno would know. Could he get up there by a rope? She wondered, and she thought of what she should feel if she herself were hanging there in mid-air by a single rope against the smooth wall. Then in her imagination she saw Zeno half-way up, and some one cut the line above, for he was discovered, and he fell. A painful thrill ran down the back of her neck and her spine and through her limbs, and she shrank in her seat.

It was up there, in the highest story, that Johannes had been a prisoner nearly two years. The windows needed no gratings, for it would be death to leap out, and no one could climb up to get in. The pier below the tower sloped to the stream, and its base ran out so far that no man could have jumped clear of it from above—even if he dared the desperate risk of striking the water. Bertrandon de la Broqui�re saw it, years afterwards, when Zeno was an old man, and you may look at a good picture of it in his illuminated book.

A solitary fisherman was perched on the edge of the sloping pier, apparently hindered from slipping off by the very slight projection of the lowest course of stones, which was perpendicular. His brown legs were bare far above the knee, he wore a brown fisherman's coat of a woollen stuff, not woven but fulled like felt; a wide hat of sennet, sewn round and round a small crown of tarred sailcloth, flapped over his ears. He angled in the slow stream with a long reed and a short line.

Zo� looked at him attentively as the boat passed near him, and she saw that he was watching her, too, from under the limp brim of his queer hat.

Her left hand hung over the gunwale of the skiff, and when she was opposite the fisherman she wetted her fingers and carelessly raised them to her lips as if she were tasting the drops. The man instantly replied by waving his rod over the water thrice, and he cast his short line each time. She had seen his mouth and chin and scanty beard below the hanging brim of his hat, and she had fancied that she recognised him; she had no doubt of it now. The solitary fisherman was Gorlias Pietrogliant, the astrologer.

Omobono had scarcely noticed him, for his own natural curiosity made him look steadily up at the high windows, on the chance that the imperial prisoner might look out just then. He had seen him once or twice before the revolution, and wondered whether he was much changed by his long confinement. But instead of the handsome bearded face the secretary remembered, a woman appeared and looked towards Pera for a moment, and drew back hastily as she caught sight of the skiff; she was rather a stout woman with red cheeks, and she wore the Greek head-dress of the upper classes. So much Omobono saw at a glance, though the window was fully ninety feet above him, and she had only remained in sight a few seconds. He had always had good eyes.

But without seeing her at all Zo� had understood that communication between the prisoner and the outer world was carried on through Gorlias, and that by him a message could be sent directly to the Emperor. She did not speak till the boat had passed the whole length of the palace and was turning in the direction of the Sweet Waters.

'That astrologer,' she said, 'do you remember him? Why has he never come again?'

Omobono promised to send for him the very next day. After that there was silence for a while, and the skiff slipped along upstream, till the secretary spoke again, to correct what he had last said.

'He had better not come to-morrow. I will tell him to come the next morning.'

'Why?' Zo� asked, in some surprise.

'To-morrow,' said Omobono, 'Messer Sebastian Polo comes to dine with the master. There will be confusion in the house.'

'Confusion, because one guest comes to dinner?' Zo� spoke incredulously.

'I believe,' said Omobono rather timidly, 'that he will not be the only guest.'

'He brings his daughter with him, then?' Zo� felt that she changed colour under her veil.

'I do not know,' the secretary said smoothly; 'but there will be several guests.'

Zo� turned towards him impatiently.

'You will have orders to keep me out of the way while they are in the house,' she said. 'I shall receive through you the master's commands not to show myself at my window!'

'How can you think such a thing?' cried Omobono, protesting. 'Rather than put you to such inconvenience I am sure the master will beg his guests to enter by the other side of the house.

If it was his object to exasperate her, he had succeeded, but if he expected her to break out in anger he was mistaken. She was too proud, and she already regretted the few hasty words she had spoken. Moreover, her anger told her something that surprised her, and wounded her self-respect. She understood for the first time how jealous she was, and that she could feel no such jealousy if she were not in love. She was not a child, and but for misfortune she would have been married at least two years by this time. This was not the dreamy and slowly stealing dawn of girlhood's day; her sun had risen in a flash amidst angry clouds, as he does in India in mid-June, when the south-west monsoon is just going to break and the rain is very near.

When Omobono had spoken she leaned back in her seat and drew the folds of her mantle more closely round her, as if to separate herself from him more completely, and she did not speak again for a long time. On his side, the secretary understood, and instead of feeling rebuked by her silence, he was pleased with himself because his curiosity had made another step forward in the land of discovery.

It occurred to him that it would be very interesting to bring Zo� and Giustina within sight of each other, if no nearer. Zeno had not said that his guests were to come by land instead of by water; the secretary had only argued that he would request them to do so, to avoid their seeing Zo� if she happened to be at her window. Omobono had power to do whatever he thought necessary for keeping the house and the approach to it in repair without consulting any one. That was a part of his duty.

It was usual to repair the road in the spring. Omobono chose to have the work done now, sent for a gang of labourers, and gave a few simple orders. Before Zeno knew what was going on the way to the main entrance was quite impassable, though a narrow passage had been left to the door of the kitchen for the servants and slaves. The secretary had suddenly discovered that the road was in such a deplorable condition as to make it necessary to dig it out to the depth of a yard here and there, where the soil was soft, thus making a series of pits, over which no horse could pass.

'What in the world possessed you to do this now?' asked Zeno, with annoyance, 'I told you that Messer Sebastian and his daughter were coming to dine with me to-morrow, as well as other friends.'

'They will see nothing, sir,' answered the secretary imperturbably. 'The guests always come by water, they dine on that side of the house, and they go away by water. How could they see the road, sir? It is beyond the court!'

Zeno did not choose to explain that he had especially begged Polo and the others to come by land, and he now concealed his displeasure, or believed that he did. But when Omobono had gone to his own room Zeno sent for the running footmen and bade them go to each of the invited guests early the next morning to say that the road was torn up and that they must be good enough to come in their boats.

Then he went upstairs, for he had not seen Zo� all day, and it pleased him to sup with her. As soon as he entered the room and saw her he felt that something was wrong, but he made as if he noticed nothing, and sat down in his usual place.

'We will have supper together,' he said in a cheerful tone, settling himself in his big chair, and rubbing his hands, like a man who has finished his day's work and looks forward to something pleasant.

As a matter of fact he had done nothing in particular, and had set himself a rather disagreeable task; for he did not wish Messer Sebastian to know that Zo� or any other woman was in the house, and he was reduced to the necessity of telling the girl not to show herself. She was legally his chattel, and if he chose he might lock her up in a room on the other side of the house for a few hours, or in the cellar. He told himself this; and for the hundredth time he recalled her own story of her birth and bringing up, which was logical and clear, and explained both her gentle breeding and the careful education she had evidently received. But logic is often least convincing when it is most unanswerable, and Zeno remained in the belief that the most important part of Zo�'s story was still a secret.

She said nothing now in answer to his announcement, but she beckoned to Yulia to bring supper, and the maid disappeared. Being out of temper with him at that moment, she was asking herself how she could possibly be jealous of Giustina Polo; she mentally added that she would no more think of sitting at the window to see her go by, than of looking at her through a keyhole. Also, she wished Zeno would sit where he was for an hour or two, and not utter a word, so that she might show him how utterly indifferent she was to his presence, and that she could be just as silent as he; and women much older than Zo� have felt just as she did then.

But Zeno, who was uncomfortable, was also resolved to be cheerful and at his ease.

'It has been a beautiful day,' he observed. 'I hope you had a pleasant morning on the water.'

'Thanks,' Zo� answered, and said no more.

This was not encouraging, but Zeno was not easily put off.

After a few moments he tried again.

'I fear you do not find my secretary very amusing,' he said.

Zo� was on the point of asking him whether he himself considered Omobono a diverting person, but she checked herself with a little snort of indignation which might have passed for a laugh without a smile. Zeno glanced at her profile, raised his eyebrows, and said nothing more till the slave-girls came with the supper. While they brought the small table and set it between the two, he leaned back in his carved chair, crossed one shapely leg over the other, and drummed a noiseless tattoo with the end of his fingers on his knee, the picture of unconcern. Zo� half sat and half lay on her divan, apparently scrutinising the nail of one little finger, pushing it and rubbing it gently with the thumb of the same hand, and then looking at it again as if she expected to observe a change in its appearance after being touched.

The maids placed the dishes on the table and poured out wine, and Zo� began to eat in silence, without paying any attention to Zeno. That is one way of showing indifference, and both men and women use it, yet it still remains surprisingly effective.

'What is the matter with you?' Zeno asked, suddenly.

Zo� pretended to be surprised and then smiled coldly.

'Oh! you mean, because I am hungry, I suppose. I have been in the open air. It must be that.'

She at once took another mouthful, and went on eating.

'No,' answered Zeno, watching her. 'I did not mean that.'

She raised her beautiful eyebrows, just as he had raised his a few minutes earlier, but she said nothing and seemed very busy with the fish. Carlo took another piece, swallowed some of it deliberately, and drank a little before he leaned back in his chair and spoke again.

'Something has happened,' he said at last with great conviction.

'Really?' Zo� pretended surprised interest. 'What?' she asked with affected eagerness.

'You understand me perfectly,' he replied with a shade of sternness, for he was growing tired of her mood.

She glanced at him sideways, as a woman does when she hears a man's tone change suddenly, and she is not sure what he may do or say next.

'You do not make it easy to understand you, my lord,' she said after an instant's hesitation.

'The matter is simple enough. I find you in a bad humour——'

'Oh no! I assure you!' Zo� broke in, with a woman's diabolical facility in interrupting a man just at the right moment for her own advantage. 'I was never in a better temper in my life!'

To prove this, she took a bird and some salad, and smiled sweetly at her plate, leaving him to prove his assertion, but he did not fall into the trap.

'Then you are not easy to live with,' he observed bluntly. 'I am glad it is over.'

'Do take some of this salad!' suggested Zo�. 'It is really delicious!'

'To-morrow,' Zeno said, without paying any attention to her recommendation, 'I shall have a few guests at dinner.'

'I should advise you to give them a salad exactly like this,' answered Zo�. 'It could not be better!'

'I am glad you like it. I leave the fare to Omobono. It is about another matter that I have to speak.'

'You need not!' Zo� laughed carelessly. 'I know what you are going to say. Shall I save you the trouble?'

'I do not see how you can guess what it is——'

'Oh, easily! You do not wish your friends to see me and you are going to order me not to look out of the window when they come. Is that it?'

'Yes—more or less——' Zeno was surprised.

'Yes, that is it,' laughed Zo�. 'But it is quite useless, sir. I shall most certainly look out of the window, unless you lock me up in another room; and as for your doing that, I will yield only to force!'

She laughed again, much amused at the dilemma in which she was placing him. And indeed, he did not at first know how to answer her declaration of independence.

'I cannot imagine why you should be so anxious to show yourself to people you do not know,' he said. 'Or perhaps you fancy they may be friends—you think that if they recognise you—but that is absurd. I have told you that if you have friends in the world you may go to them, and you say you have none.'

Zo�'s tone changed again and became girlishly petulant.

'It is nothing but curiosity, of course!' she answered. 'I want to see the people you like. Is that so unnatural? In a whole month I have never seen one of your friends—'

'I have not many. But such as I have, I value, and I do not care to let them get a mistaken impression of me, or of the way I live.'

'Especially not the women amongst them,' Zo� added, half interrogatively.

'There are none,' said Zeno, as if to cut short the suggestion.

'I see. You do not want your men friends to know that there are women living in your house, do you? They are doubtless all grave and elderly persons, who would be much shocked and grieved to learn that you have bought a pretty Greek slave. After all, you came near being a priest, did you not? They naturally associate you in their minds with the clergy, and for some reason or other you think it just as well for you, or your affairs, that they should! I have always heard that the Venetians are good men of business!'

'You are probably the only person alive who would risk saying that to me,' said Zeno, looking at her.

'What do I risk, my lord?' asked Zo�, with a sort of submissive gravity.

'My anger,' Zeno answered curtly.

'Yes sir, I understand. Your anger—but pray, my lord, how will it show itself? Shall I be beaten, or put in chains and starved, or turned out of your house and sold at auction? Those are the usual punishments for disobedient slaves, are they not?'

'I am not a Greek,' said Zeno, annoyed.

'If you were,' answered Zo�, turning her face from him to hide her smile, 'you would probably wish to tear out my tongue!'

'Perhaps.'

'It might be a wise precaution!' she laughed.

Zeno looked at her sharply now, for the words sounded like a threat that was only half-playful. She knew enough to compass his destruction at the hands of Andronicus if she betrayed him, but he did not believe she would do that, and he wondered what she was driving at, for his experience of women's ways was small.

'Listen,' he said, dropping his voice a little. 'I shall not beat you, I shall not starve you, and I shall not sell you. But if you try to betray me, I will kill you.'

She raised her head proudly and met his eyes without fear.

'I would spare you the trouble—if I ever betrayed you or any one.'

'It is one thing to talk of death, it is another to die!' Zeno laughed rather incredulously, as he quoted the old Italian proverb.

'I have seen death,' Zo� answered, in a different tone. 'I know what it is.'

He wondered what she meant, but he knew it was useless to question her, and for a few moments there was silence. The lamps burned steadily in the quiet air, for the evenings were still and cool, and the windows were shut and curtained; through the curtains and the shutters the song of a passing waterman was heard in the stillness, a long-drawn, plaintive melody in the Lydian Mode, familiar to Zo�'s ears since she had been a child.

But Zeno saw how intensely she listened to the words. She clasped her hands tightly over her knee, and bent forwards to catch each note and syllable.

The waters are blue as the eyes of the Emperor's daughter,
In the crystal pools of her eyes there are salt tears.
The water is both salt and fresh.
Over the water to my love, this night, over the water—

The voice died away, and Zo� no longer heard the words distinctly; presently she could not hear the voice at all, yet she strained her ears for a few seconds longer. The boat must have passed, on its way down to the Bosphorus.

For a whole month she had sat in the same room at that hour, and many times already she had heard men singing in their boats, sometimes to that same ancient Lydian Mode, but never once had they pronounced those meaning words. Often and often again she had passed within sight of the Amena tower, but not until to-day had she seen a solitary fisherman sitting at the pier's edge below it, and he had waved his rod thrice over the water when she passed by. And now in a flash of intuition she guessed that the singer was the fisherman and none other, and that the song was for her, and for no one else; and it was a signal which she could understand and should answer if she could; and there was but one way of answering, and that was to show some light.

'It is hot,' she said, beckoning to Yulia. 'Open the large window wide for a few minutes and let in the fresh air.'

Yulia obeyed quickly. The night was very dark.

'Besides,' Zo� continued carelessly, as Zeno looked at her, 'that fellow has a fine voice, and we shall still hear him.'

And indeed, as the window was opened, the song was heard again, at some distance—

Over the water to my love, she is awake to-night, I see her eyes amongst the stars.
Love, I am here in the dark, but to-morrow I shall see the day in your face,
I shall see the noon in your eyes, I shall look upon the sun in your hair.
Over the water, the blue water, the water both salt and fresh——

Once more the voice died away and the faint plash of oars told Zo� that the message was all delivered, and that Gorlias was gone, on his way downstream.

Zeno, whose maternal tongue was not Greek, could not be supposed to understand much of the song, for unfamiliar words sung to such ancient melodies can only be caught by native-born ears, and sharp ones at that. At a signal from Zo�, the maid shut the window again, and drew the curtains.

'Could you understand the fellow?' Zeno asked, glad in reality that the conversation had been interrupted.

'Yes,' Zo� answered lightly, 'as you would understand an Italian fisherman, I suppose. The man gave you a message, my lord. Shall I interpret what he said?'

'Can you?' He laughed a little.

'He tells you that if you will not try to force Arethusa to keep away from the window to-morrow, she will probably do as you wish—probably!'

'Your friend must have good ears!' Zeno smiled. 'But then he only said "probably." That is not a promise.'

'Why should you trust the promise of a poor slave, sir? You would not believe a lady of Constantinople in the same case if she took oath on the four Gospels! Imagine any woman missing a chance of looking at another about whom she is curious!'

'Who is the other?' asked Zeno, not much pleased.

'She is young, and as fresh as spring. Her hair is like that of all the Venetian ladies——'

'Since you have seen her, why are you so anxious to see her again?'

'Ah! You see! It is she! I knew it! She is coming to-morrow with her father.'

'Well? If she is, what of it?' asked Zeno, impatiently.

'Nothing. Since you admit that it is she, I do not care to see her at all. I will be good and you need not lock me up.'

Thereupon she bent towards the table and began to eat again, daintily, but as if she were still hungry. Zeno watched her in silence for some time, conscious that of all women he had ever seen none had so easily touched him, none had played upon his moods as she did, making him impatient, uneasy, angry, and forgiving by turns, within a quarter of an hour. A few minutes ago he had been so exasperated that he had rudely longed to box her little ears; and now he felt much more inclined to kiss her, and did not care to think how very easy and wholly lawful it was for him to do so. That was one of his many dilemmas; if he spoke to her as his equal she told him she was a slave, but when he treated her ever so little as if she were one, her proud little head went up, and she looked like an empress.

She had never been so much like one as to-night, he thought, though there was nothing very imperial in the action of eating a very sticky strawberry, drawn up out of thick syrup with a forked silver pin. She did it with grace, no doubt, twisting the pin dexterously, so that the big drop of syrup spread all round the berry just at the right moment, and it never dripped. Zeno had often seen the wife of the Emperor Charles eating stewed prunes with her fingers, which was not neat or pleasant to see, though it might be imperial, since she was a genuine empress. But it was neither Zo�'s grace nor her delicate ways that pleased him and puzzled him most; the mystery lay rather in the fearless tone of her voice and the proud carriage of her head when she was offended, in the flashing answer of her brave eyes and the noble curve of her tender mouth; for these are things given, not learnt, and if they could be taught at all, thought Zeno, they would not be taught to a slave.

He let his head rest against the back of his chair and wished many things, rather incoherently. For once in his life he felt inclined for anything rather than action or danger, or any sudden change; and in the detestable natural contradiction of duty and inclination it chanced that on that night, of all nights, he could not stay where he was to idle away two or three hours in careless talk, till it should be time to go downstairs and sleep. The habit of spending his evenings in that way had grown upon him during the past month more than he realised; but to-night he knew that he must break through it, and perhaps to-morrow, too, and for long afterwards, if not for ever. That was one reason why it had annoyed him to find Zo� out of temper.

He rose with an effort, and with something like a sigh.

'I must be going,' he said, standing beside the divan. 'Good-night.'

Zo� had looked up in surprise when he left his seat, and now her face fell.

'Already? Must you go already?' she asked.

'Yes. I have to keep an appointment. Good-night.'

'Good-night, Messer Carlo,' answered Zo� softly and a little sadly.

She had never before addressed him in that way, as an equal and a Venetian would have done, and the expression, with the tone in which it was uttered, arrested his attention and stopped him when he was in the act of turning away. He said nothing, but there was a question in his look.

'I am sorry that I made you angry,' she said, and she turned her face up to him with one of those half-pathetic, hesitating little smiles that ask forgiveness of a man and invariably get it, unless he is a brute.

'I am sorry that I let you see I was annoyed,' he answered simply.

'If I had not been so foolish, you would not go away so early!'

Her tone was contrite and regretfully thoughtful, as if the explanation were irrefutable but humiliating. Eve was, on the whole, a good woman, and is believed to be in Paradise; yet with the slight previous training of a few minutes' conversation with the serpent she was an accomplished temptress, and her rustic taste for apples has sent untold millions down into unquenchable fire. It was a mere coincidence that Eve should have been always called Zo� in the early Greek translations of Genesis, and that Zo� Rhangab� should have inherited a dangerous resemblance to the first beautiful—and enterprising—mother of men.

'I would stay if I could,' Zeno said. 'But indeed I have an appointment, and I must go.'

'Is it very important, very—very?'

Zeno smiled at her now, but did not answer at once. Instead, he walked to the window, opened the shutters again, and looked out. The night was very dark. Here and there little lights twinkled in the houses of Pera, and those that were near the water's edge made tiny paths over the black stream. After his eyes had grown used to the gloom Zeno could make out that there was a boat near the marble steps, and a very soft sound of oars moving in the water told him that the boatman was paddling gently to keep his position against the slow current. Zeno shut the window again and turned back to Zo�.

'Yes,' he said, answering her last speech after the interval, 'it is very important. If it were not, I would not go out to-night.'

He was going out of the house, then. She knew that he rarely did so after dark, and she could not help connecting his going with the invitation he had given to Polo and his daughter for the next day. Zo�'s imagination instantly spun a thread across the chasms of improbability, and ran along the fairy bridge to the regions of the impossible beyond. He was to be betrothed to Giustina to-morrow, he was going now to settle some urgent matter of business connected with the marriage-contract; or he was betrothed already; yes, and he was to be married in the morning and would bring his bride home; Zo�, in her lonely room upstairs, would hear the noisy feasting of the wedding-guests below——

When the thread broke, leaving her in the unreality, her lip quivered, and she was a little pale. Zeno was standing beside her, holding her hand.

'Good-night, Arethusa,' he said in a tone that frightened her.

The words sounded like 'good-bye,' for that was what they might mean; he knew it, and she guessed it.

'You are going away!' she cried, springing to her feet and slipping her hand from his to catch his wrist.

'Not if I can help it,' he answered. 'But you may not see me to-morrow.'

'Not in the evening?' she asked in great anxiety. 'Not even after they are gone?'

'I cannot tell,' he replied gravely. 'Perhaps not.'

She dropped his wrist and turned from him.

'You are going to be married,' she said in a low voice. 'I was sure of it.'

'No!' he answered with emphasis. 'Not that!'

She turned to him again; it did not occur to her to doubt his word, and her eyes asked him the next question with eager anxiety, but he would not answer. He only repeated the three words, very tenderly and softly—

'Good-night—Arethusa!'

She knew it was good-bye, though he would not say it; she was not guessing his meaning now. But she was proud. He should not see how hurt she was.

'Good-night,' she answered. 'If you are going away—then, good-bye.'

Her voice almost broke, but she pressed her lips tight together when the last word had passed them, and though the tears seemed to be burning her brain she would not shed them while his eyes were on her.

'God keep you,' he said, as one says who goes on a long journey.

Again he was turning from her, not meaning to look back; but it was more than she could bear. In an inward tempest of fear and pain she had been taught suddenly that she truly loved him more than her soul, and in the same instant he was leaving her for a long time, perhaps for ever. She could not bear it, and her pride broke down. She caught his hand as he turned to go and held it fast.

'Take me with you!' she cried. 'Oh, do not go away and leave me behind!'

A silence of three seconds.

'I will come back,' he said. 'If I am alive, I will come back.'

'You are going into danger!' Her hand tightened on his, and she grew paler still.

He would not answer, but he patted her wrist kindly, trying to soothe her anxiety. He seemed quiet enough at that moment, but he felt the slow, full beat of his own heart and the rush of the swelling pulse in his throat. He had not guessed before to-night that she loved him; he was too simple, and far too sure that he himself could not love a slave. Even now he did not like to own it, but he knew that the hand she held was not passive; it pressed hers tighter in return, and drew it to him instead of pushing it away, till at last it was close to his breast.

'Oh, let me go with you, take me with you!' she repeated, beseeching with all her heart.

He was not thinking of danger now, he had forgotten it so far that he scarcely paid attention to her words or to her passionate entreaty. Words had lost sense and value, as they do in battle, and the fire ran along his arm to her hand. It had been cold; it was hot now, and throbbed strangely.

Then he dropped it and took her suddenly by her small throat, almost violently, and turned her face up to his; but she was not frightened, and she smiled in his grasp.

'I did not mean to love you!'

He still held her as he spoke; she put up her hands together and took his wrists, but not to free herself; instead, she pressed his hold closer upon her throat, as if to make him choke her.

'I wish you would kill me now!' she cried, in a trembling, happy little voice.

He laughed low, and shook her the least bit, as a strong man shakes a child in play, but her eyes drew him to her more and more.

'It would be so easy now,' she almost whispered, 'and I should be so happy!'

Then they kissed; and as their lips touched they closed their eyes, for they were too near to see each other any longer. Her head sank back from his upon his arm, for she was almost fainting, and he laid his palm gently on her forehead and pushed away her hair, and looked at her long.

'I had not meant to love you,' he said again.

Her lips were still parted, tender as rose-leaves at dewfall, and her eyes glistened as she opened them at the sound of his voice.

'Are you sorry?' she asked faintly.

'I did not mean to love you!'

He kissed the question from her lips, and her right hand went up to his brown throat and round it, and drew him, to press the kiss closer; and then it held him down while she moved her head till she could whisper in his ear:—

'It was only because you were angry,' she said. 'You are not really going out to-night! Tell me you are not!'

He would not answer at first, and he tried to kiss her again, but she would not let him, and she pushed him away till she could see his face. He met her eyes frankly, but he shook his head.

'It must be to-night, and no other night,' he said gravely. 'I have made an appointment, and I have given my word. I cannot break it, but I shall come back.'

She slipped from his hold, and sat down on the broad divan, against the cushions.

'You are going into danger,' she said. 'You may not come back. You told me so.'

He tried to laugh, and answered in a careless tone:—

'I have come back from far more dangerous expeditions. Besides, I have guests to-morrow—that is a good reason for not being killed!'

He stood beside her, one hand half-thrust into his loose belt. She took the other, which hung down, and looked up to him, still pleading.

'Please, please do not go to-night!'

Still he shook his head; nothing could move him, and he would go. A piteous look came into her eyes while they appealed to his in vain, and suddenly she dropped his hand and buried her face in the soft leathern pillow.

'You had made me forget that I am only a slave!' she cried.

The cushion muffled her voice, and the sentence was broken by a sob, though no tears came with it.

'I would go to-night, though my own mother begged me to stay,' Zeno answered.

Zo� turned her head without lifting it, and looked up at him sideways.

'Then much depends on your going,' she said, with a question in her tone. 'If it were only for yourself, for your pleasure, or your fortune, you would not refuse your own mother!'

Zeno turned and began to walk up and down the room, but he said nothing in reply. A thought began to dawn in her mind.

'But if it were for your country—for Venice——'

He glanced sharply at her as he turned back towards her in his walk, and he slackened his pace. Zo� waited a moment before she spoke again, looked down, thoughtfully pinched the folds of silk on her knee, and looked up suddenly again as if an idea had struck her.

'And though I am only your bought slave,' she said, 'I would not hinder you then. I mean, I would not even try to keep you from running into danger—for Venice!'

She held her head up proudly now, and the last words rang out in a tone that went to the man's heart. He was not far from her when she spoke them. The last syllable had not died away on the quiet air and he already held her up in his arms, lifted clear from the floor, and his kisses were raining on her lips, and on her eyes, and her hair. She laughed low at the storm she had raised.

'I love you!' he whispered again and again softly, roughly, and triumphantly by turns.

She loved him too, and quite as passionately just then; every kiss woke a deep and delicious thrill that made her whole body quiver with delight, and each oft-repeated syllable of the three whispered words rang like a silver trumpet-note in her heart. But for all that her thoughts raced on, already following him in the coming hours.

With every woman, to love a man is to feel that she must positively know just where he is going as soon as he is out of her sight. If it were possible, he should never leave the house without a ticket-of-leave and a policeman, followed by a detective to watch both; but that a man should assert any corresponding right to watch the dear object of his affections throws her into a paroxysm of fury; and it is hard to decide which woman most resents being spied upon, the angel of light, the siren that walketh in darkness, or the semi-virginal flirt.

Zo� really loved Zeno more truly at that moment, because the glorious tempest of kisses her speech had called down upon her willing little head brought with it the certainty that he was not going to spend the rest of the evening at the house of Sebastian Polo. This, at least, is how it strikes the story-teller in the bazaar; but the truth is that no man ever really understood any woman. It is uncertain whether any one woman understands any other woman; it is doubtful whether any woman understands her own nature; but one thing is sure, beyond question—every woman who loves a man believes, or tells him, that he helps her to understand herself. This shows us that men are not altogether useless.

Yet, to do Zo� justice, there was one other element in her joy. She had waited long to learn that Zeno meant to free Johannes if it could be done, and he had met all her questions with answers that told her nothing; she was convinced that he did not even know the passwords of those who called themselves conspirators, but who had done nothing in two years beyond inventing a few signs and syllables by which to recognise each other. Whether he knew them or not, he was ready to act at last, and the deed on which hung the destinies of Constantinople was to be attempted that very night. Before dawn Michael Rhangab�'s death might be avenged, and Kyr�a Agatha's wrongs with Zo�'s own.

'I want to help you,' she said, when he let her speak. 'Tell me how you are going to do it.'

'With a boat and a rope,' he answered.

'Take me! I will sit quite still in the bottom. I will watch; no one has better eyes or ears than I.'

'More beautiful you mean!'

He shut her eyes with his lips and kissed the lobe of one little ear. But she moved impatiently in his arms, with a small laugh that meant many things—that she was happy, and that she loved him, but that a kiss was no answer to what she had just said, and that he must not kiss her again till he had replied in words.

'Take me!' she repeated.

'This is man's work,' he answered. 'Besides, it is the work of one man only, and no more.'

'Some one must watch below,' Zo� suggested.

'There is the man in the boat. But watching is useless. If any one surprises us in the tower, I can get away; but if I am caught by an enemy from the water the game is up. That is the only danger.'

'That is the only danger,' Zo� repeated, more to herself than for him.

He saw that she had understood now, and that she would not try to keep him longer, nor again beg to be taken. She went with him to the door of the vestibule without calling the maids, and she parted from him there, very quietly.

'God speed you!' she said, for good-bye.

When he reached the outer entrance and looked back once more, she was already gone within, and the quiet lamplight fell across the folds of the heavy curtain.