Recklow rose and passed a muscular arm around her; Cleves, beside her, held her left hand, crushing it, without intention, until she opened her eyes with a cry of pain. “Are you all right?” asked Recklow bluntly. “Yes.” She turned and looked at Cleves and he caressed her bruised hand as though dazed. “Tell me,” she said to Cleves—“you who know—know more about my mind than anybody living——” a painful colour surged into her face—but she went on steadily, forcing herself to meet his gaze: “tell me, Mr. Cleves—do you still believe that nothing can really destroy my soul? And that it shall yet win through to safety?” He said: “Your soul is in God’s keeping, and always shall be.... And if the Yezidees have made you believe otherwise, they lie.” Recklow added in a slow, perplexed way: “I have no personal knowledge of psychic power. I am not psychic, not susceptible. But if you actually possess such ability, Miss Norne, and if you have employed such knowledge to defend your life, then you have done absolutely right.” “No guilt touches you,” added Selden with an involuntary shiver, “if by hypnosis or psychic ability you really did put an end to that would-be murderer, Gutchlug.” Selden said: “If Gutchlug died by the fangs of a yellow death-adder which existed only in his own mind, and if you actually had anything to do with it you acted purely in self-defence.” “You did your full duty,” added Benton—“but—good God!—it seems incredible to me, that such power can actually be available in the world!” Recklow spoke again in his pleasant, undisturbed voice: “Go back to the map, Miss Norne, and tell us a little more about this rather terrifying thing which you believe menaces the civilised world with destruction.” Tressa Norne laid a slim finger on the map. Her voice had become steady. She said: “The devil-worship, of which one of the modern developments is Bolshevism, and another the terrorism of the hun, began in Asia long before Christ’s advent: At least so it was taught us in the temple of Erlik. “It has always existed, its aim always has been the annihilation of good and the elevation of evil; the subjection of right by might, and the worldwide triumph of wrong. “Perhaps it is as old as the first battle between God and Satan. I have wondered about it, sometimes. There in the dusk of the temple when the Eight Assassins came—the eight Sheiks-el-Djebel, all in white—chanting the Yakase of Sabbah—always that dirge when they came and spread their eight white shrouds on the temple steps——” Her voice caught; she waited to recover her composure. Then went on: “The ambition of Genghis was to conquer the world by force of arms. It was merely of physical subjection that he dreamed. But the Slayer of Souls——” “Who?” asked Recklow sharply.