The young couple were white-faced and trembling as they clung to each other. And suddenly the girl murmured,
"I—I pity you."
Groff caught at it, with his sudden wild rage flooding him. "You lie!" he rasped. "You are frightened. You are terrified of me and my revenge."
"Revenge?" young Jac muttered. "I wonder what we have done to you—except that we live and breathe and try to be happy." His arm held the trembling girl closer; and he turned and gazed into her face, her moist red lips quivering, her eyes like misted stars as she regarded him. "If we are both to die," he murmured, "still we will have each other, Manya."
"Yes," she whispered.
Then it seemed that the youth was not quite so afraid as he straightened and fronted Groff. "Your revenge, when you kill us both, is not quite complete," he said with a twisted smile.
They turned at Groff's gesture of dismissal. At the head of the great staircase which went down from the tower, dominant with his power, Groff stood with his heavy ornamented robe tossed over one shoulder and all his emblazoned insignia dangling on his chest. The young couple were still clinging to each other as they descended. Then they were a little blob, dwarfed by distance, dwindling into total insignificance. It was only a trick of lighting of the great staircase, of course; but suddenly, just before they vanished, it seemed that the light had magnified them into something gigantic....
The thing was over at last. It was a week? Two weeks? Three weeks? Groff had kept no track of the time. Exhausted with exulting he lay back in his chair with his instruments around him. How wonderful it had been. The ultimate conquest. The power of Groff and Groff alone. So many times it had made him think of those other conquerors—those little men of history who had been thrilled by their trips of triumph into some petty land their armies had devastated. That little man in his aircar, gazing in triumph, swelling himself with his pride as he gazed at the death and destruction he had brought to just one petty nation in three weeks....
Groff's triumph was over now. He had seen much of it, with his telescopes ranging the city, and on his television mirrors before the television went blank. It had been queer, how people, stricken so that they knew they had only a few days to live, had rushed around bringing their families together. Queer that then they had not really seemed afraid. Queer how the churches had been crowded, with doomed people who clung together and had a strange look on their faces as though they were not afraid to die....