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They did not come to see me," replied Tara of Helium. "I did not ask them."

They were no less your guests," replied her father.

The girl rose, and came and stood beside him and put her arms about his neck.

"My proper old Virginian," she cried, rumpling his shock of black hair.

In Virginia you would be turned over your father's knee and spanked," said the

man, smiling.

She crept into his lap and kissed him. "You do not love me any more," she

announced. "No one loves me," but she could not compose her features into a

pout because bubbling laughter insisted upon breaking through.

The trouble is there are too many who love you," he said. "And now there is

another."

"Indeed!" she cried. "What do you mean?"

Gahan of Gathol has asked permission to woo you."

The girl sat up very straight and tilted her chin in the air. "I would not wed with a

walking diamond-mine," she said. "I will not have him."

"I told him as much," replied her father, "and that you were as good as betrothed

to another. He was very courteous about it; but at the same time he gave me to

understand that he was accustomed to getting what he wanted and that he

wanted you very much. I suppose it will mean another war. Your mother's beauty

kept Helium at war for many years, and--well, Tara of Helium, if I were a young

man I should doubtless be willing to set all Barsoom afire to win you, as I still

would to keep your divine mother," and he smiled across the sorapus table and

its golden service at the undimmed beauty of Mars' most beautiful woman.

Our little girl should not yet be troubled with such matters," said Dejah Thoris.

Remember, John Carter, that you are not dealing with an Earth child, whose

span of life would be more than half completed before a daughter of Barsoom

reached actual maturity."

"But do not the daughters of Barsoom sometimes marry as early as twenty?" he

insisted.

"Yes, but they will still be desirable in the eyes of men after forty generations of

Earth folk have returned to dust--there is no hurry, at least, upon Barsoom. We

do not fade and decay here as you tell me those of your planet do, though you,

The Chessmen of Mars