"
"I do not know that the fleet has missed me as yet," I said, but
of course he did not grasp my meaning, and only looked puzzled.
"Many prisoners travel to Issus in your grim craft, Yersted?" I
asked.
"Very many," he assented.
"Might you remember one whom men called Dejah Thoris?"
"Well, indeed, for her great beauty, and then, too, for the fact
that she was wife to the first mortal that ever escaped from Issus
through all the countless ages of her godhood. And the way that
Issus remembers her best as the wife of one and the mother of
another who raised their hands against the Goddess of Life Eternal."
I shuddered for fear of the cowardly revenge that I knew Issus
might have taken upon the innocent Dejah Thoris for the sacrilege
of her son and her husband.
"And where is Dejah Thoris now?" I asked, knowing that he would
say the words I most dreaded, but yet I loved her so that I could
not refrain from hearing even the worst about her fate so that it
fell from the lips of one who had seen her but recently. It was
to me as though it brought her closer to me.
"Yesterday the monthly rites of Issus were held," replied Yersted,
"and I saw her then sitting in her accustomed place at the foot of
Issus."
"What," I cried, "she is not dead, then?"
"Why, no," replied the black, "it has been no year since she gazed
upon the divine glory of the radiant face of--"
"No year?" I interrupted.
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