“Let us go back and rejoin our bodies!” cried Djamouk in an agonised voice. “There are teeth in my throat, deep in my throat, biting and tearing out the cords.” “Cancer,” said Tressa calmly. “Your body shall die of it while your soul stumbles on through darkness.” “My Tougtchi!” shouted Djamouk, “I hear my soul bidding my body farewell! I must go before my mind expires in the terrible gaze of this young sorceress!” He turned, drifted like something misty to the solid wall. “My soul be ransom for yours!” cried Yulun to Tressa. “Bar that man’s path to life!” Tressa flung out her right hand and, with her forefinger, drew a barrier through space, bar above bar. And Benton, half swooning on his bed, saw a cage of terrible and living light penning in Djamouk, who beat upon the incandescent bars and grasped them and clawed his way about, squealing like a tortured rat in a red-hot cage. Through the deafening tumult Yulun’s voice cut like a sword: “Their bodies are dying, Heart of a Rose!... Listen! I hear their souls bidding their minds farewell!” And, after a dreadful silence: “The train speeding north carries two dead men! God is God. Niaz!” The bars of living fire faded. Two cinder-like and shapeless shadows floated and eddied like whitened ashes stirred by a wind on the hearth; then drifted through the lamp-light, fading, dissolving, lost gradually in thin air. Tressa, leaning back against the mantel, covered her face with both hands. Yulun crept to the bed where Benton lay, breathing evenly in deepest sleep. With the sheer sleeve of her tunic she wiped the blood from his face. And, at her touch, the wound in the temple closed and the short, bright hair dried and curled over a forehead as clean and fresh as a boy’s. Then Yulun laid her lips against his, rested so a moment. “Seek me, dear lord,” she whispered. “Or send me a sign and I shall come.” And, after a pause, she said, her lips scarcely stirring: “Love me. My heart is a flaming pearl burning between your hands.” Then she lifted her head. But Tressa had rejoined her body, where it lay asleep beside her deeply sleeping husband. So Yulun stood a moment, her eyes remote. Then, after a while, the little rococo bedroom in the Ritz-Carlton was empty save for a young man asleep on the bed, holding in his clenched hand a white hibiscus blossom. CHAPTER XII HIS EXCELLENCY His Excellency President Tintinto, Chief Executive of one of the newer and cruder republics, visiting New York incognito with his Secretaries of War and of the Navy, had sent for John Recklow. And now the reception was in full operation. Recklow was explaining. “In the beginning,” he said, “the Bolsheviks’ aim was to destroy everything and everybody except themselves, and then to reorganise for their own benefit what was left of a wrecked world. That was their programme——”