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"It was to save

"It was to save my brave panthan," she said in a low voice

"Tara of Heliu to one knee, "your words are as food to ers in his and pressed them to his lips

Gently she raised hi," she said, softly

Her hand was still in his as he rose and they were very close, and the man was still flushed with the contact of her body since he had carried her fro in his breast and the hot blood surging through his veins as he looked at her beautiful face, with its downcast eyes and the half-parted lips that he would have given a kingdom to possess, and then he swept her to hiainst his breast his lips smothered hers with kisses

But only for an instant Like a tigress the girl turned upon hi hi fire "You would dare?" she cried "You would dare thus defile a princess of Helium?"

His eyes met hers squarely and there was no shame and no remorse in them

"Yes, I would dare," he said "I would dare love Tara of Helium; but I would not dare defile her or any woman with kisses that were not prompted by love of her alone" He stepped closer to her and laid his hands upon her shoulders "Look into hter of The Warlord," he said, "and tell me that you do not wish the love of Turan, the panthan"

"I do not wish your love," she cried, pulling away "I hate you!" and then turning away she bent her head into the hollow of her arh to co laugh behind hiure of ain a doorway It was one of those rarities occasionally to be seen upon Barsooe upon him Bent and wrinkled, he had more the appearance of a mumain his thin laughter jarred upon the silence of the subterranean vaults "A strange place to woo! A strange place to woo, indeed! When I was a young iant pi Thuria We calooed and ways have changed, though I had never thought to live to see the time when the way of a e Ah, but we kissed them then! And what if they objected, eh? What if they objected? Why, we kissed theain "Ey, well do I recall the first of them I ever kissed, and I've kissed an arirl, but she tried to slip a dagger intoher Ey, ey, those were the days! But I kissed her She's been dead over a thousand years now, but she was never kissed again like that while she lived, I'll swear, not since she's been dead, either And then there was that other-" but Turan, seeing a thousand or , interrupted