Old Nectaria stood beside her and laid one wrinkled cheek to the cold wall, so that her face was near Zoë's, and they could still talk. 'If I refuse,' said the girl, quivering a little in her distress, 'I shall see you all die before my eyes, one by one!' 'Yet, if you leave your mother now----' the old woman began. 'She has lived through much more than losing me,' answered Zoë. 'My father's long imprisonment, his awful death!' she shuddered now, from head to foot. Nectaria laid a withered hand sympathetically on her trembling shoulder, but Zoë mastered herself after a moment's silence and turned her face to her companion. 'You must make her think that I shall come back,' she whispered. 'There is no other way--unless I give my soul, too. That would kill her indeed--she could not live through that!' 'And to think that my old bones are worth nothing!' sighed the poor old woman; she took the rags of Zoë's tattered sleeve and pressed them to her lips. But Zoë bent down, for she was the taller by a head, and she tenderly kissed the wrinkled face. 'Hush!' she whispered softly. 'You will wake her if you cry. I must do it, Ria, to save you all from death, since I can. If I wait longer, I shall grow thinner, and though I am so strong I may fall ill. Then I shall be worth nothing to the Bokharian.' 'But it is slavery, child! Do you not understand that it is slavery? That he will take you and sell you in the market, as he would sell an Arab mare, to the highest bidder?' [Illustration: She tenderly kissed the wrinkled face.] Zoë leaned sideways against the wall, and the faint light that shone upwards from the earthen lamp on the floor, fell upon her lovely upturned face, and on the outlines of her graceful body, ill-concealed by her thin rags. 'Is it true that I am still beautiful?' she asked after a pause. 'Yes,' answered the old woman, looking at her, 'it is true. You were not a pretty child, you were sallow, and your nose----' Zoë interrupted her. 'Do you think that many girls as beautiful as I are offered in the slave market?' 'Not in my time,' answered the old woman. 'When I was in the market I never saw one that could compare with you.' She had been sold herself, when she was thirteen. 'Of course,' she added, 'the handsome ones were kept apart from us and were better fed before they were sold, but we waited on them--we whom no one would buy except to make us work--and so we saw them every day.' 'He says he will give a hundred Venetian ducats for me, does he not?' 'Yes; and you are worth three hundred anywhere,' answered the old slave, and the tears came to her eyes, though she tried to squeeze them back with her crooked fingers. The sick woman called to the two in a weak voice. Zoë was at her side instantly, and Nectaria shuffled as fast as she could to the pan of coals and crouched down to blow upon the embers in order to warm some milk. 'I am cold,' complained the sufferer, 'so cold!'