“But you’ve been wounded!” she cried, observing now as he shifted a little that he moved as do those who have been hurt in the hip. “Hubert, what was it and when?” “Air raid; that’s all. Might have got it in Paris--or London.” “Look at me; where and when?” “Well, then, field hospital near Fismes early in August. I’m quite all right now.” Ruth’s eyes suddenly suffused. She had heard about that field hospital and how the German flyers had bombed it again and again, strewing death pitilessly, and how the attendants upon the wounded had worked, reckless of themselves, in an inferno. “Hubert, you were there?” “That was nothing to where you’ve been, I reckon.” “I’ve never thanked you,” Ruth replied, remembering, “for not telling on me that time you caught me on the train from Bordeaux.” “How’d you know I caught you then?” Ruth told him. He looked down. “I was pretty sure on the _Ribot_ that you weren’t Cynthia, Miss Alden,” he said, “but I was absolutely sure I wasn’t doing anything risky--to the country--in keeping still. By the way, I’ve a letter from Cynthia’s people for you.” He reached into a pocket and Ruth studied him, wonderingly. “How long have you been here, Hubert?” “Oh, three or four days.” “How long have you known where I was?” He hesitated. “Why, almost all the time--except during the retreat in March, and then when you were in Switzerland and in Germany--I’ve known fairly well where you were.” “Why didn’t you come to me four days ago?” “Didn’t have this till today.” He produced a letter postmarked Decatur, Illinois, and in the familiar handwriting of Cynthia Gail’s father. “You see, after Gerry brought you back and everything was out, I thought the only right thing--to you, Miss Alden, as well as to them--was to write Cynthia’s people. I knew you would, of course, but I thought you wouldn’t say, about yourself, what you should. So I did it. Here’s what they say.” He handed the letter to her, and Ruth withdrew nearer a lamp to read it. They were still quite alone in the corner of the canteen, and as Ruth read the letter written by the father of the girl whose part she had played, tears of gratitude and joy blinded her--gratitude not alone to the noble-hearted man and woman in Decatur, but quite as much to the friend who had written of her to them with such understanding as to make possible this letter. She came back to him with tears running down her cheeks and she seized his hand again. “Oh, Hubert, thank you; thank you! I don’t think anything ever made me so happy in all my life.” “You know Byrne’s dead, do you?” “No! Is he? He died from that----” “Not from that, Miss Alden. He completely recovered. He was killed cleanly leading his platoon in the fighting on the Vesle. He had written Cynthia’s people about you forgiving you, you see.”