'Nothing that did not affect my honour, I truly believe.' 'You would not do it for a woman's sake?' She turned to him, to watch his face, but its expression did not change. 'Three things can drive a wise man mad,--wine, women, and dice.' 'I daresay! Your lordship reckons us in good company. But that is no answer to my question.' 'Yes it is,' said Zeno with a laugh. 'Why should I do for a woman what I would not do for dice or wine?' 'But dice and wine never tempted you,' Zoë objected. Zeno laughed louder. 'Never? When I was a student at Padua I sold everything, even my books, to get money for both. It was only when the books were gone that I turned soldier, and learned the greatest game of hazard in the world. Compared with that, dice are an opiate, and wine is a sleeping-draught.' He only smiled now, after laughing, but there was a look in his face as he spoke which she saw then for the first time and did not forget, and recognised when she saw it again. It was subtle, and might have passed unnoticed among men, but it spoke to the sex in the girl, and made her young blood thrill. For worlds, she would not have had him guess what she felt just then. 'Fighting for its own sake would tempt you, if nothing else could,' she answered quietly. 'Ah--perhaps, perhaps,' he answered, musing. 'But you would need a cause, though ever so slight, and you have none here, have you?' 'None that I care to take up.' 'You may find something to fight for--over the water,' Zoë suggested, emphasising the words a little and watching his face. The phrase meant nothing to him. 'Over the water?' he repeated carelessly. 'At home, in Venice, you mean. Yes, if Venice needed me, I should not wait to be called twice!' It was quite clear that he attached no meaning to the words she had used, and this fact tallied with what the astrologer had told her in the morning as to his having been deaf to all advances made to him by the imprisoned Emperor's party. Zoë leaned back in silence for a while, almost closing her eyes, and she saw that he watched her, and that an unmistakable look of admiration stole into his face. She was wondering whether it would ever turn into something more, and whether she should ever see the gleam of fight in his eyes, for her sake, that had flashed in them a moment ago at the mere thought of battle. What did women do, to make men love them? There is an age when girls believe that love need only be called, like a tame dove, and that he will fly in at the window; and there is an age when he comes to them uncalled-for. If only the ages were the same for all, much trouble might be spared. Zoë was perhaps between the two, but she still believed that there was some fixed rule on which clever women acted to make men fall in love with them, those wicked women who are described to young girls as 'designing,' and are supposed to know precisely the effect they can produce on men at any moment, to the very nicety of an eyelash.