It was agonising to think of his danger. She did not believe that he could possibly escape from within the prison through the palace precincts; in some way or other he must succeed in climbing down the wall again, and Gorlias would find him and bring him home. But when she had said this to the astrologer, he had shaken his head. There were good reasons why Zeno should not attempt the perilous descent that night, when there had just been an alarm from below of which it was not possible to let him know the result. Moreover, no one knew whether the man whom Zoë had struck had sunk and was drowned, or had parried the blow with his arm and had succeeded in swimming ashore. Neither Gorlias nor Zoë knew that yet, and they might never know it.
She waited, but not a sound disturbed the silence of the chilly night. Within the house every one was sleeping; the two little slave-girls, curled up on their carpet in the corner, where Zoë had left them, would not wake till dawn; Omobono slept the sleep of the just in his small bedroom behind the counting-house, dreaming of the mysteries of four toes and five toes, and quenching his insatiable curiosity at last in the overflowing fountain of fancy. As for the servants and slaves, all slumbered profoundly, after the way of their kind.
But Zeno did not come. Zoë crouched in the doorway, and drew the skirts of her long Greek coat round her little white feet more than half instinctively, for she did not care if she died of the cold, since he did not come.
A mad longing seized her to go out into the city to look for him in the dark and silent streets; he might be lying somewhere, wounded and alone, perhaps left for dead; if she did not come upon him she would push on to the great gate of Blachernæ; and she was sure that she could find the way, though it was far. She would slip in, unnoticed by the sentries; she would pass herself for a woman of the palace, where she had often been taken by Kyría Agatha in the happy days; she remembered where the great tower stood in the corner of the palace yard, the farthest corner to the right, and she could almost see its door, though indeed she had never noticed one. He was somewhere behind it, somewhere in there, above or below ground, caught in the trap, waiting for the dawn of his dying day. For Andronicus would not let him live. If he was taken, his hours were numbered. He must die the death Michael Rhangabé had died; there was none more cruel.
As she thought of it, there alone in the cold, a sharp pain bit at her heart, and in the gloom she could no longer make out the white marble steps, the chequered black-and-white pavement, nor the last unextinguished lights of Pera reflected in the water; she saw nothing, and she sank back against the step behind her, fainting and unconscious.
She lay there alone, quite still; but he did not come. When she opened her eyes again she thought she had fallen asleep, and was angry with herself at the thought of having rested while he was in danger of his life. She would go out to find him, come what might. Then she tried to get upon her feet, and was startled to find that she could not. Chilled to the bone and bruised as she was, she could not move her limbs, and she wondered in terror whether she were paralysed. But she was brave still, and after a time she managed to turn on one side, and with her hands on the cold step she laboriously got upon her knees. Sensation came back and pain with it, and presently she was able to raise herself by holding the edge of the door, first on one knee, then on her feet. But that was all, and she knew that she could do no more. Perhaps she might crawl upstairs by and by, after resting a little.
She stood still a long time, holding the door and hesitating, for in her intense anxiety it seemed impossible to think of giving up and going to bed. He must come. It would be late, it might be daylight, but he must come; for if he came not, that could only mean that he was taken, and if he was taken he must die.
Again the pain bit savagely at her heart, but she set her lips and grasped the door with both hands, and refused to let herself faint.
She could at least rouse Omobono and the household to go out and search for the master. She had almost let go of the door to make the first step forward, when the counter-thought checked her. The attempt to free the Emperor had been made very secretly; if she called the secretary, the servants, the slaves, she would be revealing that secret, and if, by some miracle, Zeno were still free and safe, some one might betray him. Some one must have betrayed him already, else the watch would not have come upon him exactly at the most critical moment. The three men had been lurking near, waiting till he was on the rope the second time, and expecting to catch him in the very act of bringing out the prisoner. Who was the traitor? Most probably some one in the house. It would not be wise to call the servants, after all.
The hopelessness of it all came over the lonely girl now, and she almost let herself sink down again upon the steps to wait till daylight, if need be, for the awful news that was sure to reach her only too soon. Gorlias would bring it, and no one else.