He rose with an effort, and with something like a sigh. 'I must be going,' he said, standing beside the divan. 'Good-night.' Zoë had looked up in surprise when he left his seat, and now her face fell. 'Already? Must you go already?' she asked. 'Yes. I have to keep an appointment. Good-night.' 'Good-night, Messer Carlo,' answered Zoë softly and a little sadly. She had never before addressed him in that way, as an equal and a Venetian would have done, and the expression, with the tone in which it was uttered, arrested his attention and stopped him when he was in the act of turning away. He said nothing, but there was a question in his look. 'I am sorry that I made you angry,' she said, and she turned her face up to him with one of those half-pathetic, hesitating little smiles that ask forgiveness of a man and invariably get it, unless he is a brute. 'I am sorry that I let you see I was annoyed,' he answered simply. 'If I had not been so foolish, you would not go away so early!' Her tone was contrite and regretfully thoughtful, as if the explanation were irrefutable but humiliating. Eve was, on the whole, a good woman, and is believed to be in Paradise; yet with the slight previous training of a few minutes' conversation with the serpent she was an accomplished temptress, and her rustic taste for apples has sent untold millions down into unquenchable fire. It was a mere coincidence that Eve should have been always called Zoë in the early Greek translations of Genesis, and that Zoë Rhangabé should have inherited a dangerous resemblance to the first beautiful--and enterprising--mother of men. 'I would stay if I could,' Zeno said. 'But indeed I have an appointment, and I must go.' 'Is it very important, very--very?' Zeno smiled at her now, but did not answer at once. Instead, he walked to the window, opened the shutters again, and looked out. The night was very dark. Here and there little lights twinkled in the houses of Pera, and those that were near the water's edge made tiny paths over the black stream. After his eyes had grown used to the gloom Zeno could make out that there was a boat near the marble steps, and a very soft sound of oars moving in the water told him that the boatman was paddling gently to keep his position against the slow current. Zeno shut the window again and turned back to Zoë. 'Yes,' he said, answering her last speech after the interval, 'it is very important. If it were not, I would not go out to-night.'