Zeno was distressed, and bent over her, rather awkwardly, anxious to soothe her. She turned her face to him suddenly, without warning, and he saw that her eyes were dry and her cheeks flushed. 'Venice is a beautiful city,' he said coaxingly. 'You will be a great person in my friend's house--he will give you----' 'When are you going to send me? To-morrow?' The girl had mastered herself a little. 'I have told you that I have not made up my mind about you,' Zeno answered. 'The money I gave the Bokharian was my own. I may keep you here after all.' Zoë detested him in that moment. She longed to insult him, to strike him, to drive him away. There was something so condescending in what he said. He would make up his mind about her! He might keep her after all! He had paid his own money for her! It was not possible that she could have thought him handsome, that she could have been even momentarily attracted by his face, his manner, or his voice. 'I hate you!' she cried, shutting her teeth tightly as she spoke. He was near her, and she drew back from him as far as she could against the cushions of the divan. He resumed his seat, for he saw how angry she was. He had purposely spoken as if she were really the slave she told him that she was, and against the natural instinct which bade him treat her as his equal. 'Indeed,' he said coldly, and he took a cracked walnut from the table and began to peel the kernel, 'it is not easy to know what will please you. You seem horrified at the idea of going to Venice and furious at the thought of staying here! Of course, there is a third possibility. I would not send my friend a slave who would be so discontented as to poison him and his family, and I shall certainly not keep one in my house who hates me and may take it into her head to cut my throat in my sleep. The only thing that remains will be to sell you back to the Bokharian at a loss. Should you like that?' Zoë felt again that he was her master. 'You made me think you would be kind to me!' she said, and her voice quavered. Zeno laughed, for he had been too much annoyed to yield at once to her appeal. 'That did not prevent you from saying that you hated me, a while ago,' he answered. 'You must not expect too much Christian virtue of me, for I am no saint. I never learned to love those that hate me!' She liked him better now; as he threw back his head a little, looking at her from under his half-closed lids, she glanced at his brown throat and she did not think of cutting it, as he had suggested. But she was angry with herself for passing through so many phases of like and dislike in so short a time, and for not feeling relief at the thought of being sent on a long journey, which certainly would mean safety while it lasted, and perhaps a chance of freedom. She wondered, too, why she no longer wished to die outright now that she had saved Kyría Agatha. Her answer to his last speech was humble. 'You made me say it,' she said. 'I am sorry, sir.'