Steve said, "No, my Lady. I do not expect you to understand—quite. But perhaps you can if I tell you that in the day whence I came, earthmen were not the cringing, servile creatures you have known them to be. They were a strong race, proud and noble as your own. I did what I could to regain that lost freedom. No human worthy of the name would have been content to do otherwise."
"I am not speaking now of governments or empires, human Steve," said the silver lady softly. "Years change all things. No reasoning soul but realizes that some day Daan's dominion over Earth was bound to pass. But all this might have come in the fullness of time. It was not necessary you should hold yourself alone responsible for its accomplishment.
"So I speak not of empires, but of individuals. Did you not know when you espoused this foredoomed cause that your failure would spell an end to the dreams of intimacy you and I have shared?"
Even in the depths of his own darkest hour, Duane felt a shred of compassion for the Lady Loala. A Daan and an Overlord she was, but she was a woman, too, and one at this moment sadly forlorn.
He said quietly, "Aye, my Lady. Even this I knew."
"Then how could you, Steve of Emmeity? Why did you—?"
She stopped abruptly, her gray-green eyes narrowing shrewdly. "I begin to understand. Then these, too, your professions of admiration for me, they were all part of the plan. They, too, were insincere."
Steve said with perfect candor, "No, my Lady Loala, they were not altogether insincere."
"Not altogether!" The Overlord seized the words, hurled them back at him through clenched teeth. "But in part, at least! There is another woman, then, whose charms you find more alluring than those of the Lady Loala? Yes, there is! I read it in your eyes. Speak, I command you! Which is she who has so captured your fancy? Speak, that I may teach her the folly of pitting her fleshly wiles against the magnificence of a Daan princess.
"Is she perhaps that muck-begrimed slut who cried aloud your name in the prison camp? Or some other flabby creature, cowering in her hut on distant Earth? Speak, I say!"