Rustan stayed behind to shut the outer door, and Zoë felt that she was carried as much as twenty paces forward and upwards before the bearers stood still at last. Then the sliding panel opened, letting in light, and a strange voice told her to get out. She turned inside the palanquin and thrust out her naked feet. As she put them down, expecting to touch bare earth or a stone pavement, they rested on a rough carpet; at the same instant she sat on the edge of the litter bending her head to get out of it and looking round curiously. Rustan was not there, and in his place she saw a huge young negress with flaming red hair and rolling eyes, who roughly ordered the porters to take away the palanquin and at the same time caught Zoë's wrist, whether to help her to stand upright or to secure her person it was hard to say. The girl was much more fearless than Omobono, the Venetian secretary, and she was not frightened by the gigantic woman's appearance, as he had been. In getting out she had managed to gather the cloak round her, so that the men should not see her in her rags; for there was light in the large room where she found herself, and now that she could look about her she saw a dozen or more girls and young women standing in small groups a few paces behind the negress. They surveyed the new arrival curiously, but with different expressions. Some seemed to pity her, others smiled as if to welcome her; one good-looking girl had noticed that she had no shoes, and her lip curled contemptuously at such a proof of abject poverty, for she herself was the daughter of a prosperous Caucasian horse-thief who had brought her up in plenty and ease in order that she might fetch a high price. The bearers had now left the room and there were no men present. Zoë vaguely wished that they would come back, even the black bearers of the litter, for she felt a very womanly woman's distrust of her own sex, where so many who were strangers, and possibly not well-disposed to her, were gathered together to look at her. The negress surveyed her critically by the light of the large bronze lamp that stood on a stand beside her, and showed her sharp teeth in an approving smile that made her thick upper lip roll upwards on itself. She took the cloak from Zoë's shoulders and scrutinised her half-clad figure, till she blushed red. Then the daughter of the Caucasian horse-thief laughed rudely, and some of the others tittered while the negress gently pinched Zoë's bare arms and neck to judge of their firmness and of her general condition. Apparently the examination was tolerably satisfactory, for the woman nodded and grinned again. As yet not a word had been spoken since she had dismissed the bearers, but now she turned towards the other girls and called two of them. 'Lucilla and Yulia, you shall wait on her,' she said in Greek. 'The rest of you, to bed! It is already three hours of the night.'