"I know," said Zuan Gradenigo, "that all I say is true. That woman's name is infamous throughout Europe. It is a name of scorn. It means all that is vile—as you must know. Will Arbe ever be clean from her—even when we have washed its stones with her blood? But you!" he cried, in a new voice. "Oh, child, that you should have to serve her—be near to her! I cannot think of it with calmness."
The maid turned a little away from him and moved over to the wooden bench where Zuan's mantle had lain. And she seated herself at one end of the bench, looking across the room at him very soberly.
"And why not I, lord," she asked, "as well as another? What do you know of me? I am—a serving-maid, and such must serve whomever they may." He came nearer and stared into her face, and his own was oddly troubled, frowning.
"I cannot think of you—so," he said. "A serving-maid? There's something strange here. Oh, child, you have something about you—I cannot say what it is, for I have no words. I fight, I am not a poet, but were I such, I think—your eyes—their trick of looking—their—I cannot say what I mean. A serving-maid? Oh, child, you are fitter for velvets and jewels! I do not understand. Something breathes from you," he said, with that trouble upon his frowning face, an odd trouble in his eyes—bewildered, uncomprehending—like a child's eyes before some mystery. "Something breathes from you. I do not know what it is."
The maid looked at him in the yellow, flickering lantern-light, and she made as though she would speak, but in the end shook her head and turned it a little aside, and sat once more silent. And for a time the man also was silent, watching her averted face and thinking how amazingly beautiful it was; not white with the pallor which the Venetian women so prized, but sumptuously rich of color, sun-kissed, free, unashamed of the wholesome blood which flowed under its golden skin and stained it with red on either cheek. He found himself possessed of a mad desire to touch that cheek which was nearest him with his finger, and the sheer folly, the childishness of the thought would in any other mood have shaken a laugh of scorn from him. He was not a woman's man, as he had said, but a fighter.
One of the maid's hands stirred in her lap and dropped beside her on the wooden bench. The lantern-light fell upon it—long, slender, tapering.
"Your hand, child!" said young Zuan. "It is not the hand of a serving-maid. It has never done rough tasks."
"My princess is kind to me, lord," she said. "My tasks are easy."
He put out an uncertain hand and touched the hand that lay in the lantern-light. The maid drew a little, quick, gasping breath, and her eyes turned to him, great and dark. Then, like two silly, half-grown children caught holding hands, they both flushed red and their eyes turned aside once more.