the maiden cried:

"Touch me not; I am accursed, devoted as a victim to the sea gods.
They will slay you, if you dare to set me free."

"Let them try," said Perseus; and drawing Herpe from his thigh, he
cut through the brass as if it had been flax.

"Now," he said, "you belong to me, and not to these sea gods,
whosoever they may be!" But she only called the more on her mother.

"Why call on your mother? She can be no mother to have left you
here."

And she answered, weeping:

"I am the daughter of Cepheus, King of Iopa, and my mother is
Cassiopoeia of the beautiful tresses, and they called me Andromeda,
as long as life was mine. And I stand bound here, hapless that I am,
for the sea monster's food, to atone for my mother's sin. For she
boasted of me once that I was fairer than the Queen of the Fishes;
so she in her wrath sent the sea floods, and her brother the Fire
King sent the earthquakes, and wasted all the land, and after the
floods a monster bred of the slime what devours all living things.
And now he must devour me, guiltless though I am--me who never
harmed a living thing, nor saw a fish upon the shore but I gave it
life, and threw it back into the sea; for in our land we eat no
fish, for fear of their queen. Yet the priests say that nothing but
my blood can atone for a sin which I never committed."