He took Ruth’s struggle as meant to tempt his strength and he laughed joyously as, very gently, he overpowered her. She tried to cease to struggle; she tried to laugh as Cynthia would have laughed; but she could not. “Don’t!” she found herself resisting. “Don’t!” “Oh! I hurt you, dearest?” “Yes,” she said; though he had not. And remorsefully and with anxious endearments, he let her go. “You’ve heard about Charles?” he asked. “I’ve just come from him.” “He’s--the same?” “Yes.” She stood gasping against the wall of a building, entirely in the shadow herself, with the little light which reached them showing her his face. Ruth liked that face; and she liked the girl whom she played at being--that Cynthia whose identity she was carrying on, but about whom she yet knew so little--for having loved this man. George Byrne had been clean-living; he was strong and eager, but gentle, too. He had high thoughts and resolute ideals. These he had told her in those letters which had come; but Ruth had not embodied them in him till now. She was recovering from the offense of having anyone’s arms but Gerry’s about her. She was not conscious of thinking of Gerry that way; only, his arms had been about her, he had held her; and, because of that, what she had just undergone had been more difficult to bear. “I love you; you love me, Cynthia?” Byrne was begging of her now. “Of course I do,” she said. “There’s not someone else, then? Tell me, Cynthia!” “No--no one else,” she breathed. What could she say? She was not speaking for herself; but for Cynthia; and now she was absolutely sure that, for Cynthia, there could have been no one else. But she could not deceive him. “My God!” he gasped the realization to himself, drawing back a little farther from her. “Then that’s--that’s been the matter all the time.” “All what time?” she asked. “Since you met Gerry Hull in Chicago.” He meant, of course, since the girl who had loved him had died; but he did not know that. He had felt a change in the letters which had come to him which he could not explain as merely the result of their quarrel. Another man seemed to him the only possible explanation. Someone opened a door behind them; and Ruth withdrew from the shaft of light. “We can’t stay here, George,” she said. She thought that now he was noticing a difference in her voice; but if he did, evidently he put it down as only part of her alteration toward him. “Where can we go?” he asked her. “Not back to the _pension_,” Ruth said. “No; no! Can’t you stay out with me here? We can walk.” “Yes.” He faced down the street of the Holy Fathers away from the _pension_; she came beside him. He took her hand and for a moment held it as, undoubtedly, he and Cynthia had done when walking in darkened streets together; but after a few steps he released her. “Your hand’s thinner, Cynthia.” “I suppose so.”