And then, as if his gaze held for her some of the strange sorcery which hers had laid upon him, the woman faltered in her swift speech, and she gave a little sob.
"Oh!" she cried. "Why did I not know? Why did I not know?"
"What danger?" repeated Zuan Gradenigo, as if the words meant nothing to him.
"They know that you are here, lord," she said. "We knew, in the city, that you were coming. The fishing-boat which passed you this morning at sea brought us news of three galleys from Venice. Now two of your galleys have been blown away by the sirocco. You are but a few men, a handful, and you will be overwhelmed. Oh, lord, we whom your men took to-night were spying upon you, but there were three more who escaped—three more men. They will have reached the city before this time, and you may be attacked at any moment. Lord, why do you sit there silent? Why will you not take me on board your ship and sail away?"
It came dully to Gradenigo's mind, through the stress and whirl which obscured it, that the maid showed a strange eagerness, out of reason.
"Why do you tell me this?" he asked, suddenly. "Why not let your barbarians capture us—put us to death? Why do you wish to defeat your own cause? There's trickery here." He rose to his feet, frowning, but the woman was before him.
"If you—cannot see—lord," she said, and a bit of bright color came into her cheeks, "then I cannot tell you." Suddenly she put out her two hands upon his breast and fell to sobbing.
"I will not have you killed!" she cried. "Oh, lord, I will not have you taken or slain! For your men I care nothing. They may die where they stand and it will be nothing to me, but you—lord, I cannot bear to have you taken!" There was no trickery in that. It came from the woman's soul, shaking her sorely.
Zuan looked at her, this slim, pale girl shaken with her sobbing—this monster of vice and sin, at whose name men spat with derision—and again he felt the strange, paralyzing weakness creep over him. He could not hate her. He turned his eyes away and shook himself into attention.