? ? ? ? "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 they 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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