Arethusa Part 23

He would not answer, but he patted her wrist kindly, trying to soothe her anxiety. He seemed quiet enough at that moment, but he felt the slow, full beat of his own heart and the rush of the swelling pulse in his throat. He had not guessed before to-night that she loved him; he was too simple, and far too sure that he himself could not love a slave. Even now he did not like to own it, but he knew that the hand she held was not pa.s.sive; it pressed hers tighter in return, and drew it to him instead of pus.h.i.+ng it away, till at last it was close to his breast.

'Oh, let me go with you, take me with you!' she repeated, beseeching with all her heart.

He was not thinking of danger now, he had forgotten it so far that he scarcely paid attention to her words or to her pa.s.sionate entreaty.

Words had lost sense and value, as they do in battle, and the fire ran along his arm to her hand. It had been cold; it was hot now, and throbbed strangely.

Then he dropped it and took her suddenly by her small throat, almost violently, and turned her face up to his; but she was not frightened, and she smiled in his grasp.

'I did not mean to love you!'

He still held her as he spoke; she put up her hands together and took his wrists, but not to free herself; instead, she pressed his hold closer upon her throat, as if to make him choke her.

'I wish you would kill me now!' she cried, in a trembling, happy little voice.

He laughed low, and shook her the least bit, as a strong man shakes a child in play, but her eyes drew him to her more and more.

'It would be so easy now,' she almost whispered, 'and I should be so happy!'

Then they kissed; and as their lips touched they closed their eyes, for they were too near to see each other any longer. Her head sank back from his upon his arm, for she was almost fainting, and he laid his palm gently on her forehead and pushed away her hair, and looked at her long.

'I had not meant to love you,' he said again.

Her lips were still parted, tender as rose-leaves at dewfall, and her eyes glistened as she opened them at the sound of his voice.

'Are you sorry?' she asked faintly.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 'I did not mean to love you!']

He kissed the question from her lips, and her right hand went up to his brown throat and round it, and drew him, to press the kiss closer; and then it held him down while she moved her head till she could whisper in his ear:--

'It was only because you were angry,' she said. 'You are not really going out to-night! Tell me you are not!'

He would not answer at first, and he tried to kiss her again, but she would not let him, and she pushed him away till she could see his face. He met her eyes frankly, but he shook his head.

'It must be to-night, and no other night,' he said gravely. 'I have made an appointment, and I have given my word. I cannot break it, but I shall come back.'

She slipped from his hold, and sat down on the broad divan, against the cus.h.i.+ons.

'You are going into danger,' she said. 'You may not come back. You told me so.'

He tried to laugh, and answered in a careless tone:--

'I have come back from far more dangerous expeditions. Besides, I have guests to-morrow--that is a good reason for not being killed!'

He stood beside her, one hand half-thrust into his loose belt. She took the other, which hung down, and looked up to him, still pleading.

'Please, please do not go to-night!'

Still he shook his head; nothing could move him, and he would go. A piteous look came into her eyes while they appealed to his in vain, and suddenly she dropped his hand and buried her face in the soft leathern pillow.

'You had made me forget that I am only a slave!' she cried.

The cus.h.i.+on m.u.f.fled her voice, and the sentence was broken by a sob, though no tears came with it.

'I would go to-night, though my own mother begged me to stay,' Zeno answered.

Zoe turned her head without lifting it, and looked up at him sideways.

'Then much depends on your going,' she said, with a question in her tone. 'If it were only for yourself, for your pleasure, or your fortune, you would not refuse your own mother!'

Zeno turned and began to walk up and down the room, but he said nothing in reply. A thought began to dawn in her mind.

'But if it were for your country--for Venice----'

He glanced sharply at her as he turned back towards her in his walk, and he slackened his pace. Zoe waited a moment before she spoke again, looked down, thoughtfully pinched the folds of silk on her knee, and looked up suddenly again as if an idea had struck her.

'And though I am only your bought slave,' she said, 'I would not hinder you then. I mean, I would not even try to keep you from running into danger--for Venice!'

She held her head up proudly now, and the last words rang out in a tone that went to the man's heart. He was not far from her when she spoke them. The last syllable had not died away on the quiet air and he already held her up in his arms, lifted clear from the floor, and his kisses were raining on her lips, and on her eyes, and her hair.

She laughed low at the storm she had raised.

'I love you!' he whispered again and again softly, roughly, and triumphantly by turns.

She loved him too, and quite as pa.s.sionately just then; every kiss woke a deep and delicious thrill that made her whole body quiver with delight, and each oft-repeated syllable of the three whispered words rang like a silver trumpet-note in her heart. But for all that her thoughts raced on, already following him in the coming hours.

With every woman, to love a man is to feel that she must positively know just where he is going as soon as he is out of her sight. If it were possible, he should never leave the house without a ticket-of-leave and a policeman, followed by a detective to watch both; but that a man should a.s.sert any corresponding right to watch the dear object of his affections throws her into a paroxysm of fury; and it is hard to decide which woman most resents being spied upon, the angel of light, the siren that walketh in darkness, or the semi-virginal flirt.

Zoe really loved Zeno more truly at that moment, because the glorious tempest of kisses her speech had called down upon her willing little head brought with it the certainty that he was not going to spend the rest of the evening at the house of Sebastian Polo. This, at least, is how it strikes the story-teller in the bazaar; but the truth is that no man ever really understood any woman. It is uncertain whether any one woman understands any other woman; it is doubtful whether any woman understands her own nature; but one thing is sure, beyond question--every woman who loves a man believes, or tells him, that he helps her to understand herself. This shows us that men are not altogether useless.

Yet, to do Zoe justice, there was one other element in her joy. She had waited long to learn that Zeno meant to free Johannes if it could be done, and he had met all her questions with answers that told her nothing; she was convinced that he did not even know the pa.s.swords of those who called themselves conspirators, but who had done nothing in two years beyond inventing a few signs and syllables by which to recognise each other. Whether he knew them or not, he was ready to act at last, and the deed on which hung the destinies of Constantinople was to be attempted that very night. Before dawn Michael Rhangabe's death might be avenged, and Kyria Agatha's wrongs with Zoe's own.

'I want to help you,' she said, when he let her speak. 'Tell me how you are going to do it.'

'With a boat and a rope,' he answered.

'Take me! I will sit quite still in the bottom. I will watch; no one has better eyes or ears than I.'

'More beautiful you mean!'

He shut her eyes with his lips and kissed the lobe of one little ear.

But she moved impatiently in his arms, with a small laugh that meant many things--that she was happy, and that she loved him, but that a kiss was no answer to what she had just said, and that he must not kiss her again till he had replied in words.

'Take me!' she repeated.

'This is man's work,' he answered. 'Besides, it is the work of one man only, and no more.'

'Some one must watch below,' Zoe suggested.