"What would you do if you must choose between all that you love on earth and fealty to some other than your native land, and this one country that you call your own?"
"What would I do?" she answered. "I would not renounce my fealty to my native land.... I would keep God and my conscience and my country ... no one could take them from me ... all the rest I'd leave behind and cleave to them."
Ruth Wakefield meant this statement and she proved it later on beyond all shadow of a doubt.
When her first patient slept, Ruth went to stand beside another cot for she was always privileged to go wherever she might choose; her help in many ways, including financial aid, had made this hospital possible and she went at will among the other nurses who looked up to her as women will to one who is a natural leader of the ones with whom she associates.
She came, at length, to a cot that was apart from all the rest because its occupant had needed to be isolated for good reasons; he was violent, at times, the nurses said ... when his fever rose he soon became delirious and they had hard work keeping him under any sort of control; he was a native scout, they told her ... he had done good work that day upon the side of right, and, so, Ruth went to care for him, for it was just as natural for her to take heavy work as it was natural for the rest to let her do it.
Soon after she had taken charge of him, he stirred uneasily and mumbled in his restless sleep ... he spoke a name she'd hoped to never hear again ... the name of him whom she had loved enough to marry....
"Victorio Colenzo," moaned the man, "Victorio Colenzo is dead and I ... I am his murderer ... it was my hand that took his life.... I am a murderer, good Father Felix.... I am the murderer of the man I hated, for he took the girl I loved from me.... I killed him with my own machete and he is dead.... I am the murderer of Victorio Colenzo ... shrive my soul, good Father Felix, for I am about to go before my Maker."
The moaning ceased then, and Ruth bent over him to see if he still lived, for she could see his very lips were livid and his eyes seemed set and glazed as if with death's own dews; she put her hand upon his head and looked into his face with earnest pity in her tender eyes, for she was very pitiful and even lenient when faults of anyone except herself were to be considered.
"The poor fellow is delirious," she thought. "He does not know what he is saying. Odd that he should use that name. Poor fellow ... he will not last long, I fear. I wonder if Father Felix could come to him."
With that thought, she turned to go to try to find the Priest, for he almost always could be found where there was suffering and need of him, but Manuello (for the reader has discovered who her patient was) snatched at her hand as she was just about to go away and said to her: