It was American; nothing else! No other men in the world could have gone by so absolutely sure of themselves, singing--swinging--like that. And oh, Ruth loved them! Her people; only a few, indeed, as men were reckoned in this war; but such men! Still singing--swinging--they swept by, drawing after them a vortex of the French, who, a few moments before, had been abandoning the battle. They were all past now, the Americans; oh, how few they had been to face the German army with Paris and all the fate of France behind them. A few miles on--it could not have been farther--the Americans met the Germans; and what they did there in the woods near the tiny town of Meaux came to Ruth in wonderful fashion. The battle, which each hour--each moment through that terrible morning--had been steadily coming nearer and nearer; the battle ceased to approach. There was no doubt about it! The fighting, furious twice over and then more furious, simply could not get closer. Now the battle was going back! The marines--the American marines, sent in to stop the gap and hold the Paris road--had not merely delayed the Prussian advance; they had halted it and turned it back! That night Ruth learned a little of the miracle of the American marines from one of the men who had fought. He had been brought back, badly wounded, and for a time, while her ambulance was held up, Ruth was able to administer to the man, and he talked to her. “Three miles, we threw ’em back, Miss! Not much, three miles, but in the right direction. They asked us to delay ’em. Delay ’em; hell ... excuse me, Miss.” “Oh, that’s all right,” Ruth cried. “Oh, that’s fine! Say it again--our way!” “That’s all they asked us; to delay ’em. I was right near Wise”--Wise was the lieutenant colonel--“when we got our orders. We was to get in touch with the Germans and hold up their advance as long as we could; and then retreat to a prepared position. “‘Retreat?’ Wise yelled. ‘Retreat? Hell! We’ve just come!’ Well, Miss, we got in touch! Oh, we got in touch, all right; touched ’em with bayonets and butts. They couldn’t like it. Couldn’t quite believe at first; didn’t think it was true; so we had to prove it to ’em, you see. Three miles back toward Berlin; not much; but--you admit--in the right direction.” “I admit it,” Ruth said; and--the boy was very badly hurt--she kissed him before she climbed back to her seat. The next day, when she at last allowed herself to rest, she wrote a letter to Gerry. She had no idea where he was; so she addressed him in care of his old squadron. She had no definite notion of their present relations; what he had said, or what she herself had said, during and following their flight back to France, she simply did not know; for during that time she had dreamed extreme, incredible things, which, nevertheless, fastened themselves upon her with such reality that she could not now separate, with any certainty, the false from the true.