And all the way across from San Francisco came volunteer agent XLY-371, otherwise Alek Selden, bringing with him a girl named Sansa whom he had gone to the coast to meet, and whom he had immediately married after she had landed from the Japanese steamer _Nan-yang Maru_. Which, also, was remarkable, because, although they recognised each other instantly, and their hands and lips clung as they met, neither had ever before beheld the living body of the other. The third man who came to New York at Recklow’s summons was volunteer agent 53-6-26, otherwise Victor Cleves. His young wife, suffering from nervous shock after the deaths of Togrul Khan and of the Baroulass girl, Aoula, had been convalescing in a private sanitarium in Westchester. Until the summons came to her husband from Recklow, she had seen him only for a few moments every day. But the call to duty seemed to have effected a miraculous cure in the slender, blue-eyed girl who had lain all day long, day after day, in her still, sunny room scarcely unclosing her eyes at all save only when her husband was permitted to enter for the few minutes allowed them every day. The physician had just left, after admitting that Mrs. Cleves seemed to be well enough to travel if she insisted; and she and her maid had already begun to pack when her husband came into her room. She looked around over her shoulder, then rose from her knees, flung an armful of clothing into the trunk before which she had been kneeling, and came across the room to him. Then she dismissed her maid from the room. And when the girl had gone: “I am well, Victor,” she said in a low voice. “Why are you troubled?” “I can’t bear to have you drawn into this horrible affair once more.” “Who else is there to discover and overcome Sanang?” she asked calmly. He remained silent. So, for a few moments they stood confronting each other there in the still, sunny chamber—husband and wife who had never even exchanged the first kiss—two young creatures more vitally and intimately bound together than any two on earth—yet utterly separated body and soul from each other—two solitary spirits which had never merged; two bodies virginal and inviolate. Tressa spoke first: “I must go. That was our bargain.” The word made him wince as though it had been a sudden blow. Then his face flushed red. “Bargain or no bargain,” he said, “I don’t want you to go because I’m afraid you can not endure another shock like the last one.... And every time you have thrown your own mind and body between this Nation and destruction you have nearly died of it.” “And if I die?” she said in a low voice. What answer she awaited—perhaps hoped for—was not the one he made. He said: “If you die in what you believe to be your line of duty, then it will be I who have killed you.” “That would not be true. It is you who have saved me.”