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"Love in the pits of O-Tar!" he cried, and again his thin laughter jarred upon the
silence of the subterranean vaults. "A strange place to woo! A strange place to
woo, indeed! When I was a young man we roamed in the gardens beneath giant
pimalias and stole our kisses in the brief shadows of hurtling Thuria. We came
not to the gloomy pits to speak of love; but times have changed and ways have
changed, though I had never thought to live to see the time when the way of a
man with a maid, or a maid with a man would change. Ah, but we kissed them
then! And what if they objected, eh? What if they objected? Why, we kissed them
more. Ey, ey, those were the days!" and he cackled again. "Ey, well do I recall the
first of them I ever kissed, and I've kissed an army of them since; she was a fine
girl, but she tried to slip a dagger into me while I was kissing her. Ey, ey, those
were the days! But I kissed her. She's been dead over a thousand years now, but
she was never kissed again like that while she lived, I'll swear, not since she's
been dead, either. And then there was that other--" but Turan, seeing a thousand
or more years of osculatory memoirs portending, interrupted.
"
Tell me, ancient one," he said, "not of thy loves but of thyself. Who are you?
What do you here in the pits of O-Tar?"
"I might ask you the same, young man," replied the other. "Few there are who
visit the pits other than the dead, except my pupils--ey! That is it--you are new
pupils! Good! But never before have they sent a woman to learn the great art from
the greatest artist. But times have changed. Now, in my day the women did no
work--they were just for kissing and loving. Ey, those were the women. I mind the
one we captured in the south--ey! she was a devil, but how she could love. She
had breasts of marble and a heart of fire. Why, she--"
"Yes, yes," interrupted Turan; "we are pupils, and we are anxious to get to work.
Lead on and we will follow."
"Ey, yes! Ey, yes! Come! All is rush and hurry as though there were not another
countless myriad of ages ahead. Ey, yes! as many as lie behind. Two thousand
years have passed since I broke my shell and always rush, rush, rush, yet I
cannot see that aught has been accomplished. Manator is the same today as it
was then--except the girls. We had the girls then. There was one that I gained
upon The Fields of Jetan. Ey, but you should have seen--"
"Lead on!" cried Turan. "After we are at work you shall tell us of her."
"
"
Ey, yes," said the old fellow and shuffled off down a dimly lighted passage.
Follow me!"
"You are going with him?" asked Tara.
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