He thought of Arethusa, as he called Zoë; she had been in his mind constantly, and most of all in each of the moments of danger through which he had passed since he had left her. He thought of her lying awake on her divan in the soft light of the small lamps, waiting to hear his footsteps on the landing below her window, then falling gently asleep out of sheer weariness, to dream of him; starting in her rest, perhaps, as she dreamt that he was in peril, but smiling again, without opening her eyes, when the vision changed, and he held her in his arms once more. He little guessed what that yielding something beneath the canvas had been, on which he had pressed his foot so heavily when he had stepped ashore. She was happily ignorant, he fancied, of the succession of hairbreadth escapes through which he had passed unhurt so far. What weighed most on his mind, after all, was the thought that when he met her he should have to tell her that he had failed. But he was not thinking of her only as he sat there, for his own situation stared him in the face, and he could not think of Arethusa without wondering whether he was ever to see her again. He had heard those big stones rolled to the door, and something told him that neither Tocktamish nor his men would bring the promised bread and water in the morning. They did not believe that he was unable to pay the ransom they demanded, and they meant to starve him into yielding. But he had spoken the truth; he had not such a sum of money at his command. The question was, what the end would be. For the present they had not left him so much as a jug of water, and he suddenly realised that he was thirsty after his many exertions. He could not help laughing to himself at the idea that he might die of thirst in a cistern. But it was not in him to waste time in idly reflecting on the detestable irony of his fate, when there was any possibility that his own action might help him. He rose again and took up the lantern to make a systematic examination of his prison. After all, Tocktamish and his soldiers must have acted on the spur of the moment, and though they evidently knew the entrance to the cistern, and had probably been aware that it had a door which could be shut, it was not impossible that there might be another way out which they had overlooked in their haste.