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 assert 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. Zoë 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 Zoë 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 passwords 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 Rhangabé's death might be avenged, and Kyría Agatha's wrongs with Zoë'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,' Zoë suggested. 'There is the man in the boat. But watching is useless. If any one surprises us in the tower, I can get away; but if I am caught by an enemy from the water the game is up. That is the only danger.' 'That is the only danger,' Zoë repeated, more to herself than for him.