She took the opportunity to ask him many practical, matter-of-fact items which she needed to know--particularly about the examinations to be made upon arrival in France. “My passport’s almost ruined, you see,” she explained to him. “Why? What’s happened?” Ruth colored. “I always carried it with me; so it got soaked in the sea the other day.” Color came to his face too; that had happened when she went into the water to get him, of course. She would not have reminded him of it but that she knew she well might need help no less influential than his to pass the gateway to France. “Of course,” he said. “How’s it spoiled?” “My picture on it, mostly.” “Oh; that’ll be all right! You’ll just have to have another picture taken in France and have them paste it on. I’ll tell ’em about it and see you through, of course.” Accordingly Ruth went to her cabin and, after bolting the door against even Milicent Wetherell, she got out her passport which really had been wet by the sea but not soaked so badly that the picture was useless. Indeed, the picture was still plain enough so that a French intelligence officer might make out that it was not Ruth. So she soaked it again in water until that danger was past; then she dried it and took it with her to present at the port. “I’ve told Agnes Ertyle all about your passport,” Gerry Hull said to her when she came on deck again, “so she’ll help you out if they put the women through first. They have to be awfully careful in France these days about spies, you see--especially now--spies from America.” CHAPTER VIII: FRANCE Fear--so Ruth was finding out--is a most complicated and perplexing sensation. What she had learned about fear, upon those infrequent occasions when causes of alarm approached that queer, humdrum, almost forgotten girl who used to work for Sam Hilton, had made it appear a simple emotion to bring about a rational reaction. One fear differed from another chiefly in degrees of effect; you might be a little afraid of something--like having your skirt caught in an elevator door when the car started up too crowded; having a rough looking man suddenly accost you when you were hurrying back to Ontario Street late in a winter evening, caused more alarm; and there were other occurrences which had frightened still more. The amount of fear you felt--and the force of the corresponding reaction--seemed generally proportional to the danger threatening you; but now Ruth had been through an adventure--battle--which had menaced her life to a far greater degree than any previous experience; and she had not been afraid, in the old sense of fear. Emotions had tortured her--emotions far more violent and furious than ever she had suffered; but fear for her life had not been chief among them. Committed to battle, as she had been by the mere fact of her presence aboard the _Ribot_, the instant realization that nothing she could do could save her had amazingly freed her from fear.