“You are wonderful,” I said. “Most women would have gone mad with the horror and grief of it—to lose such wondrous beauty as was yours—and you do not care.” “Oh, yes, I care, my friend,” she corrected me, “but I do not care enough to ruin my life in all other respects because of it, or to cast a shadow upon the lives of those around me. I have had my beauty and enjoyed it. It is not an unalloyed happiness I can assure you. Men killed one another because of it; two great nations went to war because of it; and perhaps my father lost his throne or his life—I do not know, for I was captured by the enemy while the war still raged. It may be raging yet and men dying because I was too beautiful. No one will fight for me now, though,” she added, with a rueful smile. “Do you know how long you have been here?” I asked. “Yes,” she replied. “It was the day before yesterday that they brought me hither.” “It was ten years ago,” I told her. “Ten years! Impossible.” I pointed to the corpses around us. “You have lain like this for ten years,” I explained. “There are subjects here who have lain thus for fifty, Ras Thavas tells me.” “Ten years! Ten years! What may not have happened in ten years! It is better thus. I should fear to go back now. I should not want to know that my father, my mother too, perhaps, were gone. It is better thus. Perhaps you will let me sleep again? May I not?” “That remains with Ras Thavas,” I replied; “but for a while I am to observe you.” “Observe me?” “Study you—your reactions.” “Ah! and what good will that do?” “It may do some good in the world.” “It may give this horrid Ras Thavas some new ideas for his torture chamber—some new scheme for coining money from the suffering of his victims,” she said, her harsh voice saddened. “Some of his works are good,” I told her. “The money he makes permits him to maintain this wonderful establishment where he constantly carries on countless experiments. Many of his operations are beneficent. Yesterday a warrior was brought in whose arm was crushed beyond repair. Ras Thavas gave him a new arm. A demented child was brought. Ras Thavas gave her a new brain. The arm and the brain were taken from two who had met violent deaths. Through Ras Thavas they were permitted, after death, to give life and happiness to others.” She thought for a moment. “I am content,” she said. “I only hope that you will always be the observer.”