"With the beasts in the saddle, is that it? Peace on your terms. Peace with slavery for every man and woman on Earth."
"I did not say that."
"No, but you are thinking it. I can see it in your eyes."
"And what if it were true? Should a higher race bow to a race that could not hope to build a ship like this? If you could see the Martian cities you would understand."
"I have never seen a city built by beasts, filled with beasts. I doubt if I would care to visit such a city. The constant stench would be intolerable—the stench of cruelty and death."
"We are not beasts," Tragor said, still looking at her almost pleadingly. "If I were stretched out on a table in the operating room of a New York hospital, the surgeons busy with their scalpels, there would be no horrified faces, I can assure you. There is nothing about my body or brain that is in the least beastlike."
"You forget. I have seen a demonstration of just how beastlike Martians can be."
"Is there nothing I can say to convince you then?"
"Nothing. You killed a man I loved more than my own life. You've killed me too. I died with him. You are looking upon a woman who no longer places any value upon the mockery life that remains. That is why I do not fear you."
It seemed to Tragor that he, too, had died. At least a part of himself had perished. For a moment life had flamed so brightly in him that he had feared it might consume him. But now that vision of beauty, of desire's complete fulfillment, had been snatched away. There could be no rapture in the night with a woman who looked upon him with loathing and contempt.