Ruth turned, without asking more, and went into the room which had been hers, and shut herself in alone. She dared not inquire anything further, or permit anything more to be asked of her; she dared not let Milicent see her until she had time to think.
Milicent and she long ago had given to one another those intimate confidences about their personal affairs which girls, who share the same rooms, usually exchange; but Ruth’s confidences, of course, had detailed the family situation of Cynthia Gail. Accordingly, Ruth knew that Milicent had believed that the boy, whose picture was the third in the portfolio of Cynthia’s family, which Ruth always had kept upon the dresser, was Ruth’s brother. Milicent would believe, therefore, that it was this sudden discovery of her brother dying in a Paris hospital which had shocked Ruth into need for being alone just now.
Indeed, feeling for that boy, whose picture she had carried for so long, and about whom she had written so many times to his parents, and who was mentioned in some loving manner in almost every one of those letters which Ruth had received from Decatur, had its part in the tumult of sensations oversweeping her. But dominant in that tumult was the knowledge that his discovery—and, even more certainly, the arrival of George Byrne—meant extinction of Ruth as Cynthia Gail; meant annihilation of her projects and her plans; meant, perhaps, destruction of her even as Ruth Alden.
Ruth had not ceased to realize, during the tremendous events of these last weeks, that at any moment someone might appear to betray her; and she had kept some calculation of the probable consequence. When she had first embraced this wild enterprise, which fate had seemed to proffer, she had entered upon considerable risks; if caught, she would have the difficult burden of proof, when she was taking the enemy’s money and using a passport supplied by the enemy and following—outwardly, at least—the enemy’s instructions, that she was not actually acting for the enemy. But if she had been betrayed during the first days, it would have been possible to show how the true Cynthia Gail met her death and to show that she—Ruth Alden—could have had no hand in that. But now more than two months had passed since that day in Chicago when Ruth Alden took on her present identity—more than two months since the body of Cynthia Gail, still unrecognized, must have been cremated or laid away in some nameless grave. Therefore, the former possibility no longer existed.
Horror at her position, if she suddenly faced one of Cynthia Gail’s family, sometimes startled Ruth up wide-awake in bed at night. She had not been able to think what to do in such case as that; her mind had simply balked before it; and every added week with its letters subscribed by those forged “Thias” to Cynthia’s father, and those intimate endearments to Cynthia’s mother, and those letters about love to George Byrne—well, every day had made it more and more impossible to prepare for the sometime inevitable confession.
For confession to Cynthia’s family must come if Ruth lived; but only—she prayed—after the war and after she had done such service that Cynthia’s people could at least partially understand why she had tricked them. The best end of all, perhaps—and perhaps the most probable—was that Ruth should be killed; she would die, then, as Cynthia, and no one would challenge the dead. That was how Ruth dismissed the matter when the terror within clamored for answer. But she could not so dismiss it now.
Impulse seized her to flee and to hide. But, in the France of the war, she could not easily do that; nor could she slip off from Cynthia’s identity and name without complete disaster. Anywhere she went—even if she desired to take lodgings in a different zone in Paris, or indeed if she was to dwell elsewhere in the same zone—she must present Cynthia’s passport and continue as Cynthia. And other, and more conclusive reasons, controlled her.
Her sole justification for having become Cynthia Gail was her belief that she could go into Germany by aid of the German agents who would know her as Cynthia Gail. They could find her only if she went about Cynthia Gail’s work and lived at the lodgings here.
Ruth was getting herself together during these moments of realization. She opened the bedroom door and called in Milicent.
Charles Gail had been gassed. Milicent had not seen him, but Lieutenant Byrne had visited him and repeated to Milicent that he was not sure whether Charles knew him. Ruth scarcely could bear thought of visiting Charles Gail and pretending that she was Cynthia; but it was evident that he was so weak that he would suspect nothing.