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?"
"No," she said.
"You supposed they were? Your brother, and that Jac Hallen?"
"Yes."
"And you hoped they were, of course?"
"Yes," she repeated.
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....