Zoë did not even look up, and affected to answer absently, while she turned over the pages.
'Oh no!' she said. 'Not in the least, I assure you!' She went back to the title and read it aloud. '"The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri"—I have heard his name. A Sicilian, was he not? Or a Lombard? I cannot remember. Have you read the poetry? The paintings are very pretty, I see. There is much more life in Italian painting than in our stiff pictures with their gilt backgrounds. Of course, there is a certain childlike simplicity about them, an absence of school, of the traditions of good masters, of reverence for the old art! But they mean something that is, whereas our Greek pictures mean something that never was. Do you agree with me?'
She had talked on in a careless tone, toying with the book, and only looking up as she asked a question without waiting for a reply. By the time she paused she had asked so many that Zeno only noticed the last.
'You would like Venice,' he said, 'but you would like Florence better. There are good pictures there, I believe.'
'You have not seen them yourself?'
'Oh yes! But I do not understand such things. This man Alighieri describes some of them in his book. He was a Florentine.'
As Zeno showed himself more willing to talk, Zoë seemed to grow more indifferent. She laid the book down beside her, leaned back, and looked out of the window, turning her face half away from him. It was the first time he had seen her by daylight since she had come, and the strong afternoon light glowed in her white skin, her eyes, and her brown hair. He could have seen on her cheek the very smallest imperfection, had it been as tiny as the point of a pin, but there was none. He looked at her tender mouth; and in the strong glare he could have detected the least roughness on her lips, if they had not been as smooth as fresh fruit. Moreover, the line from her ear to her neck was really as perfect as it had seemed at first sight. Her nervous, high-bred young hand lay on the folds of her over-garment, within his reach, and he felt much inclined to take it and hold it. He did not remember that any woman's near presence had disturbed him in the same way, nor had he ever hesitated on the few occasions in his life when he had been inclined to take a woman's hand. He had the fullest rights which the laws of the Empire could give him, for Arethusa, as he called her, was his property out-and-out, and if he died suddenly she would be sold at auction with the furniture. Yet, for some wholly inexplicable reason he did not quite dare to touch the tips of her fingers.
'I have heard that you are a hero,' Zoë observed, without looking at him. 'Is it true?'
Then she turned her eyes to him and smiled a little maliciously, he fancied, as if she had guessed his timidity from his silence.
'Who told you such nonsense?' Zeno asked, with a laugh, for her question had broken the ice—or perhaps had quenched the fire for a while. 'I am a man like any other!'