“Talk of nerve! Talk of abnegation! Talk of perfect loyalty and courage! There is more than these in Tressa Cleves. There is that dauntless bravery which faces worse than physical death. Because the child still believes that her soul is damned for whatever happened to her in the Yezidee temple; and that when these Yezidees succeed in killing her body, Erlik will surely seize the soul that leaves it.”
There was a knocking at the door. Benton got up and opened it. Victor Cleves came in with his young wife.
Tressa Cleves seemed to have grown since she had been away. Taller, a trifle paler, yet without even the subtlest hint of that charming maturity which the young and happily married woman invariably wears, her virginal allure now verged vaguely on the delicate edges of austerity.
Cleves, sunburnt and vigorous, looked older, somehow—far less boyish—and he seemed more silent than when, nearly seven months before, he had been assigned to the case of Tressa Norne.
Recklow, Selden and Benton greeted them warmly; to each in turn Tressa gave her narrow, sun-tanned hand. Recklow led her to a seat. A servant came with iced fruit juice and little cakes and cigarettes.
Conversation, aimless and general, fulfilling formalities, gradually ceased.
A full June moon stared through the open windows—searching for the traditional bride, perhaps—and its light silvered a pale and lovely figure that might possibly have passed for the pretty ghost of a bride, but not for any girl who had married because she was loved.
Recklow broke the momentary silence, bluntly:
“Have you anything to report, Cleves?”