Doom's demonstration in the garden

In the garden of the Mountain of Power, Thulsa Doom stages a demonstration that is less a display of magic than a sermon in murder. The scene unfolds before Conan, who is held in chains, his body bruised but his spirit unbroken. Doom, speaking with an intimate, persuasive voice, first recalls his own past error: he once deemed steel stronger than all things, even human flesh and spirit. Now he proclaims the opposite — that the soul of man or woman can master everything, even steel. To prove this claim, he turns his hypnotic gaze upon a lovely golden-haired girl who stands on the garden wall, holding hands with a handsome youth, her lover. Doom asks Conan whether he knows what it is to love a girl or to be truly loved, and Conan, remembering Valeria from whom he parted with such pain, growls an assent. But Doom dismisses love as a force weaker than his own. "Perhaps you think that love conquers all," he says, "but I will show you a force stronger than steel, or even than love." Raising his hypnotic eyes to the smiling girl, he hisses, "Come to me, child." The girl's face suffuses with joy; she poises for a moment at the edge of the embankment, then, without a glance at the youth beside her, leaps from the wall and falls with a heavy thud on the tiles below. Her body lies broken, doll-like, near their feet. Conan averts his eyes. Doom laughs, his laughter spun through with a note of triumph, and delivers his lesson: "That is strength, boy — that is power! It is strength against which the hardness of steel or the resilience of human flesh are as naught. What is steel, compared to the hand that wields it; what is the hand, without a mind to command it? There is the secret of strength. Steel, bah!"