All the women Conan encounters are so different. Olivia is fussy. The Indian princess is regal. The strumpet really deserves to be thrown over his shoulder. And yet, a woman offers to exchange “favors” for assistance is not required to hold up her end of the bargain. Another woman Conan saves gets a chance to return the favor.

The most striking is Belit of course. And you see in her story the sort of transcendent love that C. L. Moore and A. Merritt so lavishly depicted. That sort of take on romance is impossible to produce in the essentially Post-Christian culture that became the norm in the decades following the thirties.