'Vito,' said Zoë, 'how is the secretary?'
'Excellency,' the Venetian answered, 'fear is an ugly sickness, which makes healthy men tremble worse than the fever does.'
He either forgot that he was supposed to be speaking to a slave who had no more claim to be called 'Excellency' than he had himself, and less, if anything; or else he had made up his mind that this beautiful Arethusa whom he had to-day seen for the first time, was not a slave at all, but a great lady in disguise.
'You are never frightened, are you, Vito?' she asked with a smile.
'I?' Vito grinned. 'Am I of iron, or of stone? Or am I perhaps a lion? When there is fear I am afraid.'
'But the master is never frightened,' suggested Zoë. 'Is he of stone, then?'
'Oh, he!' Vito laughed now, and shrugged his shoulders. 'Would you compare me with the master? Then compare copper with gold. The master is the master, and that is enough, but I am only a sailor man in his service. If there is fighting, I fight while I see that I am the stronger, but when I see that I may die I run away. We are all thus.'
'But surely you would not run away and leave Messer Carlo to be killed, would you?'
'No,' Vito answered quite simply. 'That would be another affair. It would be shame to go home alive if the master were killed. When one must die, one must, as God wills. It may be for the master, it may be for Venice. But for myself, I ask you? Why should I die for nothing? I run away. It is more sensible.'
'You need not risk being killed if you do what I am going to ask,' Zoë said, for after talking with the man she liked his honest face, and thought none the less of him for his frankness. 'It is a very simple matter.'