"I knew that you would," she said sadly, "and yet I hoped that you might not." "It is not because of you," I said quickly. "It is the other conditions which no man of honor could accept." "I know," she said, "and had you accepted them I must eventually have despised you as I despise the others." "You are unhappy here?" I asked. "Of course," she said. "Who but a maniac could be happy in this horrid place? There are, perhaps, six hundred people in the city and there is not one who knows happiness. A hundred of us form the court of the jed; the others are slaves. As a matter of fact, we are all slaves, subject to every mad whim or caprice of the maniac who is our master." "And there is no escape?" I asked. "None." "I shall escape," I said. "How?" "The fire," I replied. She shuddered. "I do not know why I should care so much," she said, "unless it is that I liked you from the first. Even while I was helping to lure you into the city for the human spider of Ghasta, I wished that I might warn you not to enter, but I was afraid, just as I am afraid to die. I wish that I had your courage to escape through the fire." I turned to Nur An, who had been listening to our conversation. "You have reached your decision?" I asked. "Certainly," he said. "There could be but one decision for a man of honor." "Good!" I exclaimed, and then I turned to the girl. "You will notify Ghron of our decision?" I asked. "Wait," she said; "ask for time in which to consider it. I know that it will make no difference in the end, but yet--Oh, even yet there is a germ of hope within me that even utter hopelessness cannot destroy." "You are right," I said. "There is always hope. Let him think that you have half persuaded us to accept the life of luxury and ease that he has offered as an alternative to death or torture, and that if you are given a little more time you may succeed. In the meantime we may be able to work out some plan of escape." "Never," she said. IX PHOR TAK OF JHAMA Back in our quarters in the chimney tower, Nur An and I discussed every mad plan of escape that entered our brains. For some reason our fetters had not been replaced, which gave us at least as much freedom of action as our apartment afforded and you may rest assured that we took full advantage of it, examining minutely every square inch of the floor and the walls as far up as we could reach, but our combined efforts failed to reveal any means for raising the partition which closed the only avenue of escape from our prison, with the exception of the window which, while heavily barred and some two hundred feet above the ground, was by no means, therefore, eliminated from our plans.