he High Gods see fit
to bring me back to Atlantis and power, you shall taste my gratitude."

"I do not want to return. I am sick of this old life here."

"But you have your palace in the city, and your servants, and your
wealth, and Phorenice will not disturb you from their possession."

"Oh, as for that, I could go back and be fan-girl tomorrow. But I do not
want to go back."

"Let me tell you it is no time for a gently nurtured lady like yourself
to go forward. I have been viceroy of Yucatan, Ylga, and know somewhat
of making a foothold in these new countries. And that was nothing
compared with what this will be. I tell you it entails hardships, and
privations, and sufferings which you could not guess at. Few survive
who go to colonise in the beginning, and those only of the hardiest, and
they earn new scars and new batterings every day."

"I do not care, and, besides, I can share the work. I can cook, I can
shoot a good arrow, and I can make garments, yes, though they were
cut from the skins of beasts and had to be sewn with backbone sinews.
Because you despise fine clothes, and because you have seen me only
decked out as fan-girl, you think I am useless. Bah, Deucalion! Never
let people prate to me about your perfection. You know less about a
woman than a boy new from school."

"I have learned all I care to know about one woman, and because of the
memory of her, I could not presume to ask her sister to come with me
now."

"Aye," she said bitterly, "kick my pride. I knew well enough it was only
second place to Nais I could get all the time I was wanting to come. Yet
no one but a boor would have reminded me of it. Gods! and to think that
half the men in Atlantis have courted me, and now I am arrived at this!"

"I must go alone. It would have made me happier to take your esteem with
me. But as it is, I suppose I shall carry only your hate."

"That is the most humiliating thing of all; I cannot bring myself to
hate you. I ought to, I know, after the brutal way you have scorned me.
But I do not, and there is the truth. I seem to grow the fonder of you,
and if I thought there was a way of keeping you alive, and unmutilated,
here in Atlantis, I do not think I should point out that Tob is tired
of waiting, and will probably be off without you." She flung her arms
suddenly about my neck, and kissed me hotly on the mouth. "There, that
is for good-bye, dear. You see I am reckless. I care not what I do now,
knowing th