'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,' Zoë 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 Zoë'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,