'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. Zoë 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.
Zoë 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 Zoë 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 Rhangabé's death might be avenged, and Kyría Agatha's wrongs with Zoë's own.
'I want to help you,' she said, when he let her speak. 'Tell me how you are going to do it.'