It had been hit! The gasoline tank had ignited; it was going down in flames. Whether friend or foe, no one on the train could know. Cries reached Ruth from other compartments in the car. Everyone was seeing it as it dropped down now faster and faster, its head burning whiter; its streamer of smoke longer and broader before the stars. The line of roofs and chimneys off to the south, which had shown in glaring silhouette, sucked it from sight. It had crashed; and a shudder shocked through Ruth as she pictured the pilot. She wanted Gerry Hull beside her to know that he was safe; her hand groped in the dark, without her will. It encountered Hubert’s and found his trembling and cold. “They’re going away, I think,” he said to reassure her. The detonations of the torpedoes dropped upon the city surely were less; the guns diminished their fire; the flashes in the sky were farther away; and the hum of the airplane motors and the bursts of machine-gun fire no longer were to be heard. A bugle from somewhere blew a none-too-confident “All clear.” The train moved on and drew after midnight into the darkened Gare du Quai-d’Orsay. It composed for Ruth a far different entrance to Paris than any she had dreamed--the dark, almost deserted railroad station as a center of an expanse vague and doubtful under the starlit city haze. A man who repeated, “Mees Seenthya Gaiil” and “Meester Huber’ Len_non_,” in patient, respectful intoning, stood at the gates from the train. He had a car, toward which he escorted Ruth and Milicent (who, Ruth insisted, must not try to find a place for herself that night) and Hubert. Several of the _Ribot’s_ men came and said good-bye to Ruth and Milicent again and made last memoranda of how they could later be located. Gerry Hull appeared and, in her brief moment with him, Ruth marveled at the change in him. The air raid and the view of his comrades fighting again and, too, this nearness of his return to duty had banished all boyishness from him; a simple sternness suddenly had returned him to a maturity which made her wonder how she ever could have assumed to scold and correct him as once she had. He saw that Ruth and Milicent passed the formalities at the _gare_. He ascertained that they had a vehicle; he brought to Ruth Lady Agnes’ farewell and offer of assistance at any time. Then, saluting, he said good-bye and they drove off. Their car was keeping along the Quai-d’Orsay at first with the Seine glinting below on the right. They passed a bridge. “Pont de Solférino,” Hubert said. They turned across the next bridge--“Pont de la Concorde!”