“You deserted us, Tara of Helium,” said John Carter.  “It is not what the guests of John Carter should expect.”

“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, yourself, belie your own words.  When the time seems proper Tara of Helium shall wed with Djor Kantos, and until then let us give the matter no further thought.”

“No,” said the girl, “the subject irks me, and I shall not marry Djor Kantos, or another—­I do not intend to wed.”

Her father and mother looked at her and smiled.  “When Gahan of Gathol returns he may carry you off,” said the former.

“He has gone?” asked the girl.

“His flier departs for Gathol in the morning,” John Carter replied.

“I have seen the last of him then,” remarked Tara of Helium with a sigh of relief.