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If you understood Greek, I would repeat some verses I know about him." "Should you love me more, if I understood Greek?" asked Arisa softly. "If I thought so, I would learn it." Aristarchi laughed roughly, so that she was almost afraid lest he should be heard far down in the house. "Learn Greek? You? To make me like you better? You would be just as beautiful if you were altogether dumb!
She loved to be in darkness, as she always told him, and for very good reasons, and she had so accustomed herself to it as to see almost as well as Aristarchi himself, for whom she was waiting. At last she heard the expected signal of his coming, the soft and repeated splashing of an oar in the water just below the window.
I told you what I said to the old man in his private room it was more like a brick-kiln than a rich man's counting-house! While I was inside, the young man was talking to the girl under a tree. I saw them through a low window as I sat discussing business with Beroviero." "You could not hear what they said, I suppose." "No. But I could see what they looked." Aristarchi laughed at his own conceit.
High up in Arisa's room the Georgian woman and Aristarchi heard all that was said, crouching together upon the floor beside the opening the slave had discovered. When the voices were no longer heard except at rare intervals, in short exclamations of satisfaction or disappointment, and only the regular rattling and falling of the dice broke the silence, the pair drew back from the praying-stool.
How should Michael Parados, the Greek robber, know the name of the gentleman he had killed? He gave a minute description of him. He said he had red hair." "You are not a Greek for nothing," laughed Arisa. "Did you ever hear of Odysseus?" asked Aristarchi. "No. What should I know of your Greek gods? If you were a good Christian, you would not speak of them."
He had not believed her when she had told him that she said her prayers at night, but she was undoubtedly praying now, and Aristarchi watched her with interest, as he might have looked at some rare foreign animal whose habits he did not understand.
They left the lodge together, and the porter watched them as they went down the dark corridor, muttering unholy things about the visitor who had disturbed him, and bestowing a few curses on Zorzi. Then he went back to peeling his onions. As Aristarchi went through the garden, he saw Marietta sitting under the plane-tree, making a little net of coloured beads.
She could not lift it with one hand. She smiled again, as she thought how easily Aristarchi would carry the money in his teeth, well tied and knotted in a kerchief, when he slipped down the silk rope from her window, though it would be much wiser to exchange it for pearls and diamonds which Contarini might see and admire, and which she could easily take with her in her final flight.
At the same instant a well-known voice greeted him by name, as Zorzi himself appeared from the inner cabin. "I did not expect to find you so soon," said the porter with a growl of satisfaction. "I wish you had found him sooner," laughed Aristarchi carelessly. "And since you are here, I hope you will carry him off with you and never let me see his face again, till all this disturbance is over!
For though Aristarchi had hitherto managed to escape being seen, he would have killed Jacopo with his naked hands if the latter had ever caught him, as easily as a boy wrings a bird's neck, and with as little scruple of conscience. The Georgian loved him for his hirsute strength, for his fearlessness, even his violence and dangerous temper.
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