Her mother had died about a year after Tara was born. Her father had brought her up, here on little Zura; had educated her. For fourteen years, until his death a year or so ago, she had been his constant companion. George Simpson was an educated man, a scholar. He had left earth, determined never to return, so that he had taken many books with him, with which Tara had been taught. And he had found here a strange, primitive little people. There were, I believe, since it is understood now that the Zurians were a dying race, no more than a few thousands, living here in these interlacing honeycombed grottos. The forceful Simpson, when he had learned their language, had come to rule them. His intelligence, much greater than their own, and his own ideas which seemed here, at least, possible of attainment, had enabled him to make himself the Zurian ruler. I must state now that it is far from my purpose--even if space permitted, which it does not--to sketch the life-history of the tragic little Zurian people. I am no ethnologist. Nor can I detail the effect George Simpson had upon them--the practical working of his ideal economic system. Books have been written on it in the last half century, based on what Tara was able to tell the learned men who questioned her. And as I indicated in my preface, much nonsense has been written. I think that my own experience, with Tara there in Zura, will demonstrate fully what I mean. "And so now," I said, "since your father's death, you are ruler here?" "Yes, of course. I followed my father's ideals." "And there is no crime here? Nobody does anything wrong? They obey you?" "I make them obey me," she said; and again her eyes flashed with the little lightnings. "So I understand you came here to get what it is you call Xalite?" she added suddenly. "Yes." "Something that belongs to us--to me--not to you." * * * * * I withheld my smile. She was amazingly beautiful, reclining there so close to me. Her bosom, the contour of it faintly apparent beneath the white furry garment, rose and fell with her emotion. Her long snow-white hair glistened with a silvery sheen in the opalescent light. "You're very beautiful, Tara," I said abruptly. "Your strange white hair--" "My mother was like that. So you are a thief? My father would have expected it of any man of earth." I had touched her hand, where it rested on the fur rug beside me. "You were taught to hate all earth-people, weren't you, Tara?" "I hate thievery, and murder." Her beautiful moist red lips curved with her scorn. "Five of you--just five to represent earth's millions--and you are thieves and murderers. Everywhere on earth it is the same. Oh, I _know_--my father, he told me. Oh, he tried so hard for what is right--" "I know he did, Tara. But he was doomed to fail."