Benton looked immensely surprised. “I supposed,” he said, “that she and Cleves considered the marriage to be merely a temporary necessity. I didn’t imagine that they cared for each other.” “I don’t suppose they did at first,” said Selden. “But I think she’s interested in Victor. And I don’t see how he can help falling in love with her, because she’s a very beautiful thing to gaze on, and a most engaging one to talk to.” “She’s about the prettiest girl I ever saw,” admitted Benton, “and about the cleverest. All the same——” “All the same—_what_?” “Well, Mrs. Cleves has her drawbacks, you know—as a real wife, I mean.” Recklow said: “There is a fixed idea in Cleves’s head that Tressa Norne married him as a last resort, which is true. But he’ll never believe she’s changed her ideas in regard to him unless she herself enlightens him. And the girl is too shy to do that. Besides, she believes the same thing of him. There’s a mess for you!” Recklow filled his pipe carefully. “In addition,” he went on, “Mrs. Cleves has another and very terrible fixed idea in her charming head, and that is that she really did lose her soul among those damned Yezidees. She believes that Cleves, though kind to her, considers her merely as something uncanny—something to endure until this Yezidee campaign is ended and she is safe from assassination.” Benton said: “After all, and in spite of all her loveliness, I myself should not feel entirely comfortable with such a girl for a real wife.” “Why?” demanded Recklow. “Well—good heavens, John!—those uncanny things she does—her rather terrifying psychic knowledge and ability—make a man more or less uneasy.” He laughed without mirth. “For example,” he added, “I never was nervous in any physical crisis; but since I’ve met Tressa Norne—to be frank—I’m not any too comfortable in my mind when I remember Gutchlug and Sanang and Albert Feke and that dirty reptile Yarghouz—and when I recollect _how that girl dealt with them_! Good God, John, I’m not a coward, I hope, but that sort of thing worries me!” Recklow lighted his pipe. He said: “In the Government’s campaign against these eight foreigners who have begun a psychic campaign against the unsuspicious people of this decent Republic, with the purpose of surprising, overpowering and enslaving the minds of mankind by a misuse of psychic power, we agents of the Secret Service are slowly gaining the upper hand. “In this battle of minds we are gaining a victory. But we are winning solely and alone through the psychic ability and the loyalty and courage of a young girl who, through tragedy of circumstances, spent the years of her girlhood in the infamous Yezidee temple at Yian, and who learned from the devil-worshipers themselves not only this so-called magic of the Mongol sorcerers, but also how to meet its psychic menace and defeat it.” He looked at Benton, shrugged: