“I suppose you’re thinking that’s the way I got my opinions too,” he said. “But it’s not quite true. I wasn’t trying to be English or French or foreign in any way. I was proud--not ashamed--to be American. Why, at school in England they used to have a regular game to get me started bragging about America and Chicago and our West. I liked the people over there; but I liked our people better. Grandfather--well, he seemed to me about the greatest sort of man possible; and his friends and father’s friends who used to come to look me up at Harrow once in a while--some of ’em were pretty raw and uncouth, but I liked to show ’em off! I did. They’d all done something themselves; and most of ’em were still doing things--big things--and putting in eight or ten hours a day in their offices. They weren’t gentlemen at all in the sense that my friends at Harrow knew English gentlemen; but I said they were the real thing. America--my country--was made up of men who really did things! “Then the war came and showed us up! I tell you, Miss Gail, I couldn’t believe it at first. It seemed to me that the news couldn’t be getting across to America; or that lies only were reaching you. Then the American newspapers came to France and everyone could see that we knew and stayed out!” “Last week,” Ruth said, “and yesterday; and before I met you this morning, I knew how to tell you what I tried to that day at Mrs. Corliss’. I’ve thought more about that, I’m sure, than anything else recently; but now--” she gazed across the little table at him and shook her head--“it’s no use. It’s not anything one can argue, I guess. It’s just faith and feeling--faith in our own people, Lieutenant Hull!” She saw, as he watched her, that she was disappointing him and that he had been hoping that, somehow, she could resolve the doubts of his own people which possessed him; she saw--as she had observed at Mrs. Corliss’--that his eyes lingered upon her face, upon her hands, as though he liked her; but her stubbornness in upholding those people whom she would not even try to explain, offended him again. He glanced out the port above her. “We’re picking up a cruiser escort,” he said suddenly. “Let’s go out and look her over.”