A Princess of Mars

As I came close to her she swayed toward me with outstretched hands,

but as I reached to take her in my arms she drew back with a shudder

and a little moan of misery.

"Too late, too late," she grieved. "O my chieftain that was, and whom

I thought dead, had you but returned one little hour before--but now it

is too late, too late."

"What do you mean, Dejah Thoris?" I cried. "That you would not have

promised yourself to the Zodangan prince had you known that I lived?"

"Think you, John Carter, that I would give my heart to you yesterday

and today to another? I thought that it lay buried with your ashes in

the pits of Warhoon, and so today I have promised my body to another to

save my people from the curse of a victorious Zodangan army."

"But I am not dead, my princess. I have come to claim you, and all

Zodanga cannot prevent it."

"It is too late, John Carter, my promise is given, and on Barsoom that

is final. The ceremonies which follow later are but meaningless

formalities. They make the fact of marriage no more certain than does

the funeral cortege of a jeddak again place the seal of death upon him.

I am as good as married, John Carter. No longer may you call me your

princess. No longer are you my chieftain."

"I know but little of your customs here upon Barsoom, Dejah Thoris, but

I do know that I love you, and if you meant the last words you spoke to

me that day as the hordes of Warhoon were charging down upon us, no

other man shall ever claim you as his bride. You meant them then, my

princess, and you mean them still! Say that it is true."

"I meant them, John Carter," she whispered. "I cannot repeat them now

for I have given myself to another. Ah, if you had only known our

ways, my friend," she continued, half to herself, "the promise would

have been yours long months ago, and you could have claimed me before

all others. It might have meant the fall of Helium, but I would have

given my empire for my Tharkian chief."

Then aloud she said: "Do you remember the night when you offended me?

You called me your princess without having asked my hand of me, and

then you boasted that you had fought for me. You did not know, and I

should not have been offended; I see that now. But there was no one to

tell you what I could not, that upon Barsoom there are two kinds of

women in the cities of the red men. The one they fight for that they

may ask them in marriage; the other kind they fight for also, but never

ask their hands. When a man has won a woman he may address her as his

princess, or in any of the several terms which signify possession. You

had fought for me, but had never asked me in marriage, and so when you

called me your princess, you see," she faltered, "I was hurt, but even

then, John Carter, I did not repulse you, as I should have done, until

you made it doubly worse by taunting me with having won me through

combat."