The day the great assault began Ruth demanded to get up, and--it seemed until that day that someone must have doubted her--at last she was permitted to do as she pleased. So she returned to the Rue des Saints Pères and to her old rooms with Milicent; she wore again the khaki uniform which she had worn in Picardy; and, after reading the communiques that night, she applied for active duty as an ambulance driver. That day the Germans had swept the French, in one single rush, from the Chemin des Dames; the enemy were over the Aisne. Back, back; everywhere the French, as the British in Picardy, were driven back, yielding guns by the hundred, prisoners by the tens of thousands. The Boche were over the Vesle now; they had Fismes. God! Again they were upon the Marne! Could nothing stop them? Still they were rushing onward, a broken army before them. Ruth was in Paris, where talk of a sort which she had never heard in France before was upon everyone’s lips. France had given all and the Germans yet advanced. Their guns hourly roared louder. Four years ago, to be sure, their guns were heard as plainly in the Paris streets; four years ago the German field gray had come even closer; four years ago the government had abandoned Paris and prepared, even though Paris were taken, to fight and fight. But that was four years ago and the French army was young and unspent; Britain, then, had barely begun to come in. France had gathered all her strength, and, in her mighty hour at the Marne, had hurled back the enemy, “saving” Paris! What mockery was that memory this day! Here, after the four years and the spending of French and British strength, the Germans were at the gates again only more numerous and more confident than before. Ruth stayed alone in her room during a lone afternoon writing to Cynthia Gail’s father and mother a full confession of all that she had done. Her whole enterprise, so hopefully taken up, had failed, she said. She related what she had tried to do; indeed, in defense of herself, she related how she had succeeded in entering Germany and in learning something of the German plan for the great drive which was now overwhelming the world; but she had failed to bring back any proof which was required to convince the army that the information she had gained was dependable. So she felt that she had played Cynthia Gail’s part for no gain; she had no great achievement to offer Cynthia’s parents in recompense for the wrong which she had done them.