at last the giant serving man emerged from the inner office his expression was cast in a smile of sinister satisfaction. From the Palace of Peace he hurried directly to the palace of the Dusarian minister. 

 That night two swift fliers left the same palace top. One sped its rapid course toward Helium; the other— 

 Thuvia of Ptarth strolled in the gardens of her father’s palace, as was her nightly custom before retiring. Her silks and furs were drawn about her, for the air of Mars is chill after the sun has taken his quick plunge beneath the planet’s western verge. 

 The girl’s thoughts wandered from her impending nuptials, that would make her empress of Kaol, to the person of the trim young Heliumite who had laid his heart at her feet the preceding day. 

 Whether it was pity or regret that saddened her expression as she gazed toward the southern heavens where she had watched the lights of his flier disappear the previous night, it would be difficult to say. 

 So, too, is it impossible to conjecture just what her emotions may have been as she discerned the lights of a flier speeding rapidly out of the distance from that very direction, as though impelled toward her garden by the very intensity of the princess’ thoughts. 

 She saw it circle lower above the palace until she was positive that it but hovered in preparation for a landing. 

 Presently the powerful rays of its searchlight shot downward from the bow. They fell upon the landing stage for a brief instant, revealing the figures of the Ptarthian guard, picking into brilliant points of fire the gems upon their gorgeous harnesses. 

 Then the blazing eye swept onward across the burnished domes and graceful minarets, down into court and park and garden to pause at last upon the ersite bench and the girl standing there beside it, her face upturned full toward the flier. 

 For but an instant the searchlight halted upon Thuvia of Ptarth, then it was extinguished as suddenly as it had come to life. The flier passed on above her to disappear beyond a grove of lofty skeel trees that grew within the palace grounds. 

 The girl stood for some time as it had left her, except that her head was bent and her eyes downcast in thought. 

 Who but Carthoris could it have been? She tried to feel anger that he 

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