Then the moment of Ruth, the little girl and the dreamer, was gone; and Ruth, the business woman competent to earn twenty-five dollars a week, examined what she held in her hand. As she made out the papers more clearly, her heart only beat faster and harder; her hands went moist and trembled and her breath was pent in by presence of the great challenge which had come to her, which was not fairy at all but very real and mortal and which put at stake her life and honor but which offered her something to “do” beyond even her dreams. For the picture upon the passport was not of her but only of a girl very much like her; the name, as inscribed in the body of the passport and as written in hand across the picture and under the seal of the United States, was not her own but of someone named Cynthia Gail; and along with the passport was an unattached paper covered with small, distinct handwriting of a man relating who Cynthia Gail was and what the recipient of this money and this passport was expected to do. This paper like the passport was complete and untorn. There was besides a page of correspondence paper, of good quality, written upon both sides in the large, free handwriting of a girl--the same hand which had signed the photograph and the passport, “Cynthia Gail.” Ruth read these papers and she went to her door and locked it, she went to her window and peered cautiously out. If anyone had followed her, he was not now in evidence. The old, dilapidated street was deserted as usual at this time and on such a day except for a delivery truck speeding past, a woman or two on the way to the car line, and a few pallid children venturing out in the cold. Listening for sounds below, Ruth heard no unusual movements; so she drew far back from the window with the money and with the passport and with the explanatory paper and the letter which she laid before her and examined most carefully again. CHAPTER II: THE WAND OF WAR The man who had formed the small, distinct characters covering the paper of instructions had written in English; but while he was quite familiar with English script, it was evident that he had written with the deliberate pains of a person who realizes the need of differentiating his letters from the formation natural to him. That formation, clearly, was German script. Like everyone else, Ruth knew German families; and, like many other American girls who had been in high schools before the outbreak of the war, she had chosen German for a modern language course. Indeed, she had learned German well enough so that when confronted by the question on her War Registration card, _What foreign languages do you read well?_ she had written, _German_.