“He caught me, Gerry; but he didn’t tell me so,” Ruth corrected. “I didn’t know at all that I’d given him answers which he knew were false until I found out some family facts from Charles Gail here the other day. Hubert must have known I wasn’t Cynthia, but----” “What?” “I guess he trusted to me, myself, that I could not be against our cause.” She had not attempted to make a rebuke of that reply; but Gerry felt it. “Hub hadn’t been put in my position, Ruth,” he defended himself. “He hadn’t been made responsible for you--in France.” “I think that he felt himself wholly responsible for me, Gerry,” Ruth replied, coloring warmly as she thought of the complete loyalty of her strange friend. “Only he felt willing to accept the responsibility.” “But he did not know what you were doing!” Gerry protested. “He did not know that you were accused as a spy!” “No,” Ruth said; then, “So I am accused, Gerry?” “Byrne accused you, you said. Inquiries certainly have been made; that puts another problem up to a man.” “Yes,” she said. But he knew, as he gazed down at her, that she was thinking that Hubert would have trusted her just the same. Was she manipulating him now, Gerry wondered? Was it possible that this girl had been playing with and utilizing him in what had just passed? Had George Byrne come and had all happened which she had told him or was it conceivable that she had contrived the whole story, or distorted it for effect upon him to anticipate accusation against her from other quarters? Had Hubert really found out about her; or was that too invented for the sake of flicking him into blind espousal of her plans? Flashes of such sort fought with every natural reaction to remembrance of his own close comradeship with her. Impossible; impossible! his impulses iterated to him. But his four years in France had taught him that the impossible in relations, in understandings, in faiths and associations between man and man and man and woman had ceased to exist. In this realization, at least, his situation was truly distinct from Hubert’s. He believed in her; at least, he wished to tear his hands apart from their clench together behind him; he longed to extend them to her; he burned at thought of lifting her again and feeling her weight in his arms; and when he looked at her lips, it fired flame to his; yet---- “I don’t flatter myself that I can control the report which is being compiled about you, Ruth Alden,” he said. “What I have said, and may say, will only be a part of the data which will determine what’s to be done with you. For you realize, now, that one thing or the other’s to be done.” “I realize that, Gerry,” she said. “You know that in one case they must arrest you and try you--by court-martial.” “Yes.”