'It is a daring plan, and it could not succeed in broad daylight,' he said, when she had finished, 'but it may at dusk.'
'It must,' Zoë said emphatically. 'If it fails, we shall not see each other again.'
'Not unless it occurs to Andronicus to crucify us together,' Gorlias answered, rather gravely. 'Very much depends on our timing ourselves as exactly as possible.'
'Yes. Let it be a little more than half an hour after sunset, just when the dusk is closing in. Have you everything you need?'
'I can get what is lacking. We have three good hours still before us.'
'Go, then, and do not be late. You know what will happen to me if you do not come just at the right time.'
'You are risking more than I,' Gorlias said.
'I have more to lose, and more to win,' Zoë answered.
She was thinking of Zeno,—of life with him, of life without him, and of the life she would give for his. But Gorlias wondered at her courage, for it was held nothing in those days to tear a living man or woman to shreds, piecemeal, on the mere suspicion of treason, and that would surely be her fate if he could not carry out precisely and successfully the plan she had thought of. A delay of half an hour might mean death to her, though it would not of necessity affect the result so far as Johannes and Zeno were concerned.
Gorlias left her to make his own preparations. When he was gone Zoë sent Yulia for Zeno's own man, Vito, the Venetian boatman. He came and stood on the threshold while she spoke to him, out of the maids' hearing, and in Italian, lest they should creep near and listen.