There comes a time to most men when above everything they desire rest,
and now that hour was with me, the exiled and the desolate. Here in this
strange country and among these alien people I had found one soul which
was akin to mine, that of a beautiful woman who loved me and whom I
had come to love and desire. But what was the end of it? Owing to the
necessities of statecraft and her own nobleness, she had been separated
from me and although, as it would seem, she had as yet escaped
defilement, was spirited away into the temple of some barbarous worship
where I was almost sure death had found her.
At the best she was blinded, and where she lay in her darkness no man
might come because of the superstitions of these folk. Even if Kari
became Inca, it would not help me or her, should she still live, since
he was the fiercest bigot of them all and swore that he would kill me,
his friend, rather than that I should touch her, the vowed to his false
gods.
Or perhaps, through the priests, to save himself such sorrow, he
would kill her. At the least, dead or not, she was lost to me, while
I--utterly alone--must fight for a cause in which I had but one concern,
to bring some savage prince to his end because of his crime against
Quilla.
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