“I am so sorry,” in a voice as though tears were not far off. “What can we do to make ourselves more worth having? Do you want us to fight?”
“Fight? No! There are two women in men’s clothes among my fellows, who give me more trouble than all the rest put together.”
“How horrid!” said Zoe.
“Oh, the men are awfully good to them, and consider them a sort of saints. But they don’t drill—of course I haven’t given them the chance—and they won’t see the necessity of it for others. What they want is blood, like the old lady in Dickens, and they are always haranguing the men and stirring them up to bother me to lead them to the slaughter of the Roumis. They have wrongs to avenge, no doubt; but it’s furies like that who make the men lose their heads and lead to regrettable incidents when there comes a fight.”
“Princess!” They had reached the crest of a rise, and Prince Romanos, flushed and disturbed, met them with a rush. “What is this that I hear? You have been in danger—proper care was not taken for your safety? Allow me to relieve you, Colonel. You will doubtless be glad to return to your duties.”
“Colonel Wylie’s duty at the present moment is to see me to the monastery,” said Zoe, angry for Wylie’s sake rather than her own. “He has said so twice.”
But Wylie failed in the basest manner to second her. “If the Prince will allow me to surrender the charge to him, I will venture to leave you, ma’am,” and he removed her hand resolutely from his arm. Zoe could have wept.
“If I didn’t care for you so much, I should hate you!” she said to him in her thoughts. “But after all, it is not your fault, but the fault of your pride. That is fighting hard, but you yourself are on my side. And how sorry you will be some day for all the horrid things you have said!”
The thought assisted her to parry good-humouredly the anxious inquiries of Prince Romanos, who could not understand how she could be at all calm, far less cheerful, after what she had gone through; and since he did not know of the cordial received as Wylie drew her up on the ledge, she might well seem to him a remarkably equable person. The Greek, who had been silent and thoughtful since his visit to the Magniloquent, took her friendliness as a good omen, and was encouraged by it to talk about himself, a subject on which he was still brimful of recondite information. Negativing Zoe’s suggestion that they should go down into Ephestilo to fetch Constantine, with the assurance that he had met him joyously riding towards the monastery on the shoulder of a stalwart Emathian, the poet claimed the attention of his auditor with a deep sigh.
“I am afraid you are sorry I was rescued,” said Zoe, for the sake of saying something.