h."

He paused an instant. "I think now I shall wait until the next
opposition--we are far from Earth now, but all in good time we shall be
closer.... Strange is it not, that I should like to tell you my plans?"

She did not answer; she watched his smile fading into a look of
grimness. "In the Great City, here on Venus, they are getting ready to
attack me. Did you know that?"

"No," she said.

"You supposed they were? Your brother, and that Jac Hallen?"

"Yes."

"And you hoped they were, of course?"

"Yes," she repeated.

He frowned. "You are disconcertingly frank, Lady Elza. Well, let me tell
you this--it would come to nothing. The _Rhaals_ are with them--all the
resources of the Central State are to be thrown against me. Yet it will
come to nothing."

Her heart leaped. Tarrano was making his last stand. Beyond the logical
sense of his words, she could see it in his eyes. He knew he was making
his last stand. He knew too that she was now aware of it; and that
behind the confidence of his words--that was the confession he was
making.

Tarrano's last stand! There seemed to her then something illogically
pathetic in it all. This man of genius--so short a time ago all but the
Emperor of three worlds. And now, with them slipping from his grasp,
reduced to this last stronghold in the bleak fastnesses of the Cold
Country, awaiting the inevitable attack upon him. Something pathetic....

"I'm sorry, Tarrano."

As though mirrored from her own expression, a wistful look had come to
him. Her words drove it away.

"Sorry? There is nothing to be sorry about. Their attack will come to
nothing ... yet--" He stopped short, and then as though deciding to say
what he had begun, he added:

"Yet, Lady Elza, I am no fool to discard possibilities. I may be
defeated." He laughed harshly. "To what depths has Tarrano fallen that
he can voice such a possibility!"

He leaned toward her and into his tone came a greater earnestness than
she ever heard in it before.

"Lady Elza, if they should be successful, they would not capture me--for
I would die fighting. You understand that, don't you?"

She met his eyes; the gleam in them held her. Forgetful of herself, she
had allowed the fur to drop from her: she sat bolt upright, the dim red
light tinting the scarf that lay like gossamer around her white
shoulders. His hand came out and touched her arm, slipped up to her
shoulder and rested there, but she did not feel it.

"I will