Here's an excerpt from the book I was reading. Seeing as how everything Edgar Rice Burroughs has written is in public domain, it's on Google Books, too.
For a little bit of context... John Carter of Virginia and Dejah Thoris of Helium (a city on Mars) have been married 22 years. For 10 of them they were together, for 10 he was stuck on Earth, and since he returned she's been in constant captivity (kidnapped), always just out of John Carter's reach. He's always fighting to reach her and has been supposedly killed several times. Right now he's been captured during yet another attempt to free her from the captivity of a king who wants to marry her. John Carter, unarmed, just rushed 50 guards to get to his wife who is being restrained next to the throne of the king (Salensus Oll). She then makes this speech.
"Think you, Salensus Oll, that the wife of such as he is," she cried, "would ever dishonor his memory, were he a thousand times dead, by mating with a lesser mortal? Lives there upon any world such another as John Carter, Prince of Helium? Lives there another man who could fight his way back and forth across a warlike planet, facing savage beasts and hordes of savage men, for the love of a woman?
"I, Dejah Thoris, Princess of Helium, am his. He fought for me and won me. If you be a brave man you will honor the bravery that is his, and you will not kill him. Make him a slave if you will, Salensus Oll; but spare his life. I would rather be a slave with such as he than be Queen of Okar."
I found that so touching I copied it, long hand, into the letter I'm writing to DH.
I miss him. :(
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