“You’re a little thinner all over. I can’t see you well; but you felt that way,” he said a little sadly, referring to his embrace which she had broken. “You’ve been overdoing, of course.” She made no reply; and for several seconds he offered nothing more but went on, gazing down at her. “You’ve been fine, Cynthia, in getting those people out.” He spoke of what he had heard of her work in the retreat. “I knew ten days ago you were in it; but I couldn’t go to you! I tried to; I tried to get into the fight. We all tried--our men; but they didn’t want us. Except Gerry Hull, of course, and a few like him.” He said this so completely without bitterness--with envy, only--that Ruth felt more warmly for him. “It’s Gerry Hull, isn’t it, Cynthia?” he demanded directly. “Yes,” she admitted now. Denial had become wholly impossible; moreover, by telling the truth--or that much of the truth which had to do with Gerry Hull--she might send George Byrne away. It was a cruel wrong to him, and to the girl who was dead; but the wrong already was done. Ruth merely was beginning herself to reap some of the fruits of her deception. “You love him?” Byrne inquired of her inevasively. “Yes.” “He loves you?” “I don’t know.” “What’s he said to you?” “Nothing--about loving me.” “But he loves you, all right; he must, if he knows you!” Byrne returned in pitiful loyalty to his Cynthia. “How much has gone on between you?” he demanded. Ruth related to him much about her meetings with Gerry, while they walked side by side about the Paris streets. A dozen times she was on the point of breaking down and telling him all the truth; when his hand reached toward hers, instinctively, and suddenly pulled away; when they passed a light and, venturing to gaze up, she saw his face as he looked down at her; when he asked her questions or offered short, hoarse interjections, she almost cried out to him that she was a fraud; the girl he had loved, and who she was saying had turned from him, was dead and had been dead all that time during which he had felt the difference; she had never met Gerry Hull at all. “What are you stopping for?” he asked her at one of these times. “Thinking about the Sangamon River?” That was the Illinois river which flowed close by Cynthia Gail’s home. And Ruth knew from his voice that by the river Cynthia and he first had known love. “Yes,” Ruth said; but now her courage completely failed her. “What did you say to me, then; oh, what did we both say, Cynthia?” This was no test or challenge of Ruth; it was simply a cry from his heart. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways, I love thee to the depth and height.... He was starting to quote something which they used to repeat together. “Go on, Cynthia!” he charged. “I can’t,” Ruth cried. “You can’t--after you found it and taught it to me? ‘_I love thee with the breath, smiles, tears, of all my life_,’” he quoted bitterly to her. “Let me look at you better, Cynthia!”