“The _Tuscania_ to the north of Ireland; torpedoed when we were at sea. Two or three hundred of our men are missing; they don’t know exactly how many yet.” The news had reached the others of the _Ribot’s_ passengers, who were taking the same train for Paris that afternoon. Ruth shared a compartment in the little European-gauged cars, with Milicent Wetherell and two French women; but the train was a “corridor train,” as Ruth learned to say, and the occupants of the different compartments could visit one another much as they might in the larger American cars. There was news of recent air raids upon Paris--one raid had been most deadly and destructive; there was news of various sorts from the French and British fronts--a little news also from the short American sectors; for it was announced that the Americans had taken over a new portion of the line in Lorraine. But the report of the successful attack of the U-boats upon the _Tuscania_ overshadowed all other news. It was not alone the loss of the hundreds of American soldiers; it was the ugly threat that, where the U-boats at last had succeeded in sinking a transport out of a convoy, they might succeed again and, as the Germans had been boasting, they might--they just possibly might cut that bridge of ships really beginning this month to bring America over the seas. Ruth thrilled with discovery at how these people here in France had come to count upon the arrival of her people. She talked not only with the acquaintances from the _Ribot_, but Milicent and she practiced their French upon the polite and patient ladies from Bordeaux. Ruth thus found that these French women were relieved that the _Tuscania_ was not an American ship and had not been under convoy of American destroyers when it was lost. “They have the most appalling faith in us!” Ruth reported this to Gerry when he stopped to speak with her during the afternoon. “They think we can do anything; that we cannot fail!” “That’s their way,” he warned. “We’re the new ally. The British must have done wonders to get off all but two hundred men from a crowded transport going down in a heavy sea.” “I don’t mean that we could have done more,” Ruth said, “or that we could have saved the _Tuscania_; I’m just glad people can believe so in us. But it puts upon us an awful responsibility to make good.” “It does,” Gerry agreed, laconically, and went on. The train pulled into Poitiers--Poitiers of the battle of the Black Prince in her _Green’s English History_! It ran on to Tours! Now the names of even the little towns, as they neared Paris, were familiarly full of legend and romance. Hubert Lennon “looked by” in the evening, as he often had during the day; and, as Milicent was visiting elsewhere just then, he sat down beside Ruth.