Her hands dropped listlessly beside her and her chin sank.
“So you believe that Yezidee devil caught your soul when it was wandering somewhere out of your body, and destroyed it,” he said.
She did not answer, did not even lift her eyes until he had stepped close to her—closer than he had ever come. Then she looked up at him, but closed her eyes as he swept her into his arms and crushed her face and body against his own.
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!”