'It is true!' Zoë clasped her hands against the wall and pressed her forehead against them, closing her eyes. 'It is true,' she repeated, in the same whisper, 'I am so strong!'
Old Nectaria stood beside her and laid one wrinkled cheek to the cold wall, so that her face was near Zoë's, and they could still talk.
'If I refuse,' said the girl, quivering a little in her distress, 'I shall see you all die before my eyes, one by one!'
'Yet, if you leave your mother now——' the old woman began.
'She has lived through much more than losing me,' answered Zoë. 'My father's long imprisonment, his awful death!' she shuddered now, from head to foot.
Nectaria laid a withered hand sympathetically on her trembling shoulder, but Zoë mastered herself after a moment's silence and turned her face to her companion.
'You must make her think that I shall come back,' she whispered. 'There is no other way—unless I give my soul, too. That would kill her indeed—she could not live through that!'
'And to think that my old bones are worth nothing!' sighed the poor old woman; she took the rags of Zoë's tattered sleeve and pressed them to her lips.
But Zoë bent down, for she was the taller by a head, and she tenderly kissed the wrinkled face.
'Hush!' she whispered softly. 'You will wake her if you cry. I must do it, Ria, to save you all from death, since I can. If I wait longer, I shall grow thinner, and though I am so strong I may fall ill. Then I shall be worth nothing to the Bokharian.'