“My brother!” Ruth cried. It had come to her as Cynthia Gail, of course. She had thought, when nearing the _pension_, that probably she would find an accumulation of mail to which, as Cynthia, she must reply. But she had been Cynthia so long now that she had almost ceased to fear an emergency. Her brother, of course, was Charles Gail, who had quarreled with his father and of whom nothing had been heard for four years. Ruth took the message and learned that Charles had been with the Canadians since the start of the war; he had enlisted under an assumed name; but when wounded and brought to Paris, he had given his real name and asked that his parents be informed. The information had reached them; so his father had cabled Cynthia to try to see Charles before he died. “I told Lieutenant Byrne about it,” Milicent said to Ruth. “Lieutenant Byrne?” “Why, yes; wasn’t that right? He called here for you last week; and several times since. He said he was engaged to you; why--isn’t he?” “Yes, he was. That’s all right,” Ruth said. “So he’s been about to see your brother.” “How is he? Charles, I mean, of course.” “He was still living yesterday.” “Lieutenant Byrne is still here?” “As far as I know, he is.” CHAPTER XIII: BYRNE ARRIVES Ruth turned, without asking more, and went into the room which had been hers, and shut herself in alone. She dared not inquire anything further, or permit anything more to be asked of her; she dared not let Milicent see her until she had time to think. Milicent and she long ago had given to one another those intimate confidences about their personal affairs which girls, who share the same rooms, usually exchange; but Ruth’s confidences, of course, had detailed the family situation of Cynthia Gail. Accordingly, Ruth knew that Milicent had believed that the boy, whose picture was the third in the portfolio of Cynthia’s family, which Ruth always had kept upon the dresser, was Ruth’s brother. Milicent would believe, therefore, that it was this sudden discovery of her brother dying in a Paris hospital which had shocked Ruth into need for being alone just now. Indeed, feeling for that boy, whose picture she had carried for so long, and about whom she had written so many times to his parents, and who was mentioned in some loving manner in almost every one of those letters which Ruth had received from Decatur, had its part in the tumult of sensations oversweeping her. But dominant in that tumult was the knowledge that his discovery--and, even more certainly, the arrival of George Byrne--meant extinction of Ruth as Cynthia Gail; meant annihilation of her projects and her plans; meant, perhaps, destruction of her even as Ruth Alden.