"Why you had gone none could guess, for your princess still lived--"
"Thank God," I interrupted him. "I did not dare to ask you, for
I feared I might have been too late to save her--she was very low
when I left her in the royal gardens of Tardos Mors that long-gone
night; so very low that I scarcely hoped even then to reach the
atmosphere plant ere her dear spirit had fled from me for ever.
And she lives yet?"
"She lives, John Carter."
"You have not told me where we are," I reminded him.
"We are where I expected to find you, John Carter--and another.
Many years ago you heard the story of the woman who taught me the
thing that green Martians are reared to hate, the woman who taught
me to love. You know the cruel tortures and the awful death her
love won for her at the hands of the beast, Tal Hajus.
"She, I thought, awaited me by the Lost Sea of Korus.
"You know that it was left for a man from another world, for
yourself, John Carter, to teach this cruel Thark what friendship
is; and you, I thought, also roamed the care-free Valley Dor.
"Thus were the two I most longed for at the end of the long pilgrimage
I must take some day, and so as the time had elapsed which Dejah
Thoris had hoped might bring you once more to her side, for she
has always tried to believe that you had but temporarily returned
to your own planet, I at last gave way to my great yearning and a
month since I started upon the journey, the end of which you have
this day witnessed.
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