Ruth had desired the light instinctively, with no conscious reason; the same instinct which made her need to see him before she could go on, probably affected him; but with him had been the idea that the light would banish the illusion which overswept him again and again that this girl still was his Cynthia. But the faint, flickering illumination from the candle had failed to do that; it seemed, on the contrary, at times to restore and strengthen the illusion. A better light might have served him more faithfully; and if he brought her close to the candle and scrutinized her again as he had under the light of the street, he would see surely that she was someone else. But here, Ruth realized, she was falling into the postures of the girl who was dead. “Cynthia!” Byrne whispered again to her. “What I know about Cynthia Gail,” Ruth said to him gently then, “is this.” And she told, almost without interruption from him, how Cynthia had met her death. Ruth did not explain how she had learned her facts; for a while the facts themselves were overwhelming enough. He made sure that he could learn nothing more from her before he challenged her as to how she knew. “You read this in a newspaper, you said?” “Yes; in all the Chicago newspapers,” Ruth replied. “I read the accounts in all to find out everything which was known about her.” “Wait now! You said no one knew her; she was not identified.” “No; she was not.” “Then you saw her? You identified her?” “No; I never saw her.” “Then how do you know it was Cynthia? See here; what are you holding from me? How do you know she’s dead at all?” “The Germans told me. The Germans said that she was the girl who was killed in that wreck.” “The Germans? What Germans? What do you mean?” “A German--I don’t know who--but some German identified her from her passport and took the passport.” “Why? How do you know that? How did you get into her affairs, anyway?” “Because I was like her,” Ruth said. “I happened to be so very like her that----” “That what?” He was standing over her now, shaking, controlling himself by intervals of effort; and Ruth faltered, huddling back a little farther from him and gazing up at him aghast. She had determined, a few minutes earlier, that there had become no alternative for her but to confess to him the entire truth; but the truth which she had to tell had become an incredible thing, as the truth--the exact truth of the circumstances which fix fates--has a way of becoming. Desperately her mind groped for a way to arrange the events of that truth in a way to make him believe; but each moment of delay only made her task more impossible. He had roused from the suspicion, which had begun to inflame him when they were yet on the street, to a certainty that the girl whom he loved had been foully dealt by. “That what?” he demanded again.