He had more quickly banished any concern over his friend’s disappearance and was observing Ruth with so frank an interest that, instead of gazing away from her when she looked about at him, his eyes for an instant rested upon hers; his were meditative, almost wistful eyes for that moment. They made her think, suddenly, of the little boy whose picture with his grandfather she used to see in her father’s newspaper--an alert, energetic little boy, yet with a look of wonder in his eyes why so much fuss was made about him. “I seem to’ve been saying no end of stuffy things since I’ve been back, Miss Gail; they appeared to be what I was expected to say. But I’m about at the finish of ’em. I’m to say something here this afternoon; and I’m going to say exactly what I think. Wouldn’t you?” “Of course I would,” Ruth said. “Then you forgive me?” “For what?” “Posing like such a self-righteous chump in a cab that you felt you ought to ask me what you should do!” “You haven’t been posing,” Ruth denied for him again. “Why, when I saw you, what amazed me was that--” she stopped suddenly as she saw color come to his face. “That I wasn’t striking an attitude? Look here, I’m--or I was--one man in fifty thousand in the foreign legion; and one in thousands who’ve been in the air a bit. I’d no idea what I was getting into when they told me to come home here or I’d--” he stopped and shifted the subject from himself with abrupt finality. “You’re going to France, Hub tells me. You’ve been there in peacetime, of course--Paris surely.” Ruth nodded. She had not thought that, as Cynthia, she must have been abroad until he was so certain of it. “Did you ever go about old Paris and just poke around, Miss Gail?” “In those quaint, crooked little streets which change their names every time they twist?” “The Rue des Saints Pères, the Rue Pavée--that name rather takes one back, doesn’t it? Some time ago it must have been when in Paris a citizen could describe where he lived by saying it was on ‘the paved street.’” “Yet it was only in the fifteenth century that wolves used to come in winter into Paris.” “To scare François Villon into his _Lodgings for a_ _Night_?” Gerry said. “So you know that story of Stevenson’s, too?” “Yes.” “I suppose, though, you had to stay at the Continental, or the Regina, or some hotel like that, didn’t you? I did at first, when my tutor used to take me. You’d have been with your parents, of course----” “Of course,” Ruth said. “But have you planned where you’ll stay now? You’ll choose your own billets, I believe.” Ruth appealed to her memories of Du Maurier and Victor Hugo; she had read, long ago, _Trilby_ and _Les Misérables_, of course, and _Notre-Dame de Paris_; and she knew a good bit about old Paris. “The Latin Quarter’s cheapest, I suppose.” “And any amount the most sport!”