Now her red lips were on his; now her face and heart and limbs and breast melted into his—her breath, her pulse, her strength flowed into his and became part of their single being and single pulse and breath. And she felt their two souls flame and fuse together, and burn together in one heavenly blaze—felt the swift conflagration mount, overwhelm, and sweep her clean of the last lingering taint; felt her soul, unafraid, clasp her husband’s spirit in its white embrace—clung to him, uplifted out of hell, rising into the blinding light of Paradise. Far—far away she heard her own voice in singing whispers—heard her lips pronounce _The Name_—“Ata—Ata! Allahou——” Her blue eyes unclosed; through a mist, in which she saw her husband’s face, grew a vast metallic clamour in her ears. Her husband kissed her, long, silently; then, retaining her hand, he turned and lifted the receiver from the clamouring telephone. “Yes! Yes, this is 53-6-26. Yes, V-69 is with me.... When?... To-day?... Very well.... Yes, we’ll come at once.... Yes, we can get a train in a few minutes.... All right. Good-bye.” He took his wife into his arms again. “Dearest of all in the world,” he said, “Sanang is cornered in a row of houses near the East River, and Recklow has flung a cordon around the entire block. Good God! I _can’t_ take you there!” Then Tressa smiled, drew his head down, looked into his face till the clear blue splendour of her gaze stilled the tumult in his brain. “I alone know how to deal with Prince Sanang,” she said quietly. “And if John Recklow, or you, or Mr. Benton or Mr. Selden should kill him with your pistols, it would be only his body you slay, not the evil thing that would escape you and return to Erlik.” “_Must_ you do this thing, Tressa?” “Yes, I must do it.” “But—if our pistols cannot kill this sorcerer, how are you going to deal with him?” “I know how.” “Have you the strength?” “Yes—the bodily and the spiritual. Don’t you know that I am already part of you?” “We shall be nearer still,” he murmured. She flushed but met his gaze. “Yes.... We shall be but one being.... Utterly.... For already our hearts and souls are one. And we shall become of one mind and one body. “I am no longer afraid of Sanang Noïane!” “No longer afraid to slay him?” he asked quietly. A blue light flashed in her eyes and her face grew still and white and terrible. “Death to the body? That is nothing, my lord!” she said, in a hard, sweet voice. “It is written that we belong to God and that we return to Him. All living things must die, Heart of the World! It is only the death of souls that matters. And it has arrived at a time in the history of mankind, I think, when the Slayer of Souls shall slay no more.” She looked at him, flushed, withdrew her hand and went slowly across the room to the big bay window where potted flowers were in bloom. From a window-box she took a pinch of dry soil and dropped it into the bosom of her gown.