“And her passport?” He was thinking now, Ruth knew, of her ruined passport and how he had advised her about having a new picture put on it and how it had been, not by her own credentials but by his requesting Agnes Ertyle to vouch for her, that she had been accepted in France. “Yes; I took her passport and her identity--everything she had and was, Gerry. I became on noon of that day Cynthia Gail. That forenoon, I was Ruth Alden working for a real estate firm named Hilton Brothers in Chicago for twenty-five dollars a week. I wanted to tell you that--oh I wanted so much to tell you all about myself that afternoon when you asked how I happened to be at Mrs. Corliss’ and could think and say such different things from the other people there.” “Why didn’t you?” She confused him, at first, as she had George Byrne; and she made Gerry suspicious, too, but with an impersonal challenge and distrust quite distinct from what Byrne’s had been. The real Cynthia Gail, of course, had meant nothing to Gerry; he had known her only as Ruth had come to him. What he was concerned for was the cause for which and in which he had lived for four years--the cause which was protected and secured by passports and credentials and authentic identities and which was threatened by those who forged passports and appeared in the allied lines under names other than their own. “I dared trust no one then--you almost last of all.” “With what?” “The great plan which I dreamed I might carry out alone--a plan of going into Germany, Gerry, as a spy for America!” “Ah! So that’s the idea in Switzerland!” “Yes. The chance came to me that morning within a few minutes after I spoke to you in the motor car on the street. You remember that?” “Of course.” “I was almost crazy to get into the war; and I couldn’t find any way; then....” She told him, much as she had told Byrne, about the German who had played the beggar and who had stopped her; of the disclosures in her room; of her going to the hotel and finding Hubert waiting; and then, after she had gone to Mrs. Corliss’ and met Gerry, how the German woman had ordered her to take the _Ribot_. “The rest about me, I guess you know now, Gerry.” He made no answer as he had made no challenge except a question or two to bring out some point more clearly. For a while, as she made her confession, he had remained seated opposite her and gazing at her with increasing confusion and distress; then, unable to remain quiet, he had leaped to his feet. “Go on,” he had bid when she halted. “I’m listening.” And she knew that he was not only listening but feeling too as he paced to and fro before her on the other side of the lamp staring down at the floor for long seconds, glancing at her, then staring away again. “Hush!” he had warned her once when someone passed the door; she had waited and he had stood listening for the step to die away. “All right now,” he had told her.