He checked her; his smile was ironical. "You and I know that, Lady Elza. We know that on this plane we would not want everlasting life if we could have it. But the public does not know that--let us not discuss it. I was telling you--confessing to you--I have lost Mars. Temporarily, of course. Meanwhile, I have been preparing to invade the Earth." His gesture was expansive. "I have been planning, from here in the Cold Country, to send armies to your Earth."
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?"
"You supposed they were? Your brother, and that Jac Hallen?"
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....
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.