A woman
who was hatched from an egg, and whose span of life might cover a
thousand years; whose people had strange customs and ideas; a woman
whose hopes, whose pleasures, whose standards of virtue and of right
and wrong might vary as greatly from mine as did those of the green
Martians.
Yes, I was a fool, but I was in love, and though I was suffering the
greatest misery I had ever known I would not have had it otherwise
for all the riches of Barsoom. Such is love, and such are lovers
wherever love is known.
To me, Dejah Thoris was all that was perfect; all that was virtuous
and beautiful and noble and good. I believed that from the bottom
of my heart, from the depth of my soul on that night in Korad as I
sat cross-legged upon my silks while the nearer moon of Barsoom
raced through the western sky toward the horizon, and lighted up the
gold and marble, and jeweled mosaics of my world-old chamber, and I
believe it today as I sit at my desk in the little study overlooking
the Hudson. Twenty years have intervened; for ten of them I lived
and fought for Dejah Thoris and her people, and for ten I have lived
upon her memory.
The morning of our departure for Thark dawned clear and hot, as do
all Martian mornings except for the six weeks when the snow melts at
the poles.
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