He could not follow in his mind the simple events related in the letters; but he liked to hear the sentences about home objects, and the names of the people he had loved, and who loved him.
“You’ll—come back—tomorrow, Cynth?” he pleaded.
Ruth promised and kissed him again and departed.
It was quite dark now on the streets with only the sound of the evening bustle. The long-range German gun had ceased firing; but the dim lights beside doorways proved that on this clear, still night the people of Paris realized the danger of air raids. Ruth was hurrying along, thinking of the boy she had left and of his comrades in the long rows of beds; from them her thoughts flew back to the battle, to “1583” and his English on the hill, to Grand’mère Bergues’ farm, and to Gerry Hull; she thought of the German soldiers she had seen with him and of her errand to their land. Almost before she realized it, she was turning into the little street of the Holy Fathers when a man, approaching out of the shadows, suddenly halted before her and cried out:
“Cynthia!”
The glow of light was behind him, so she could not make out his face; but she knew that only one stranger, recognizing her as Cynthia, could have cried out to her like that; so she spoke his name instantly, instinctively, before she thought.
Her voice either was like Cynthia’s or, in his rush of feeling, George Byrne did not notice a difference. He had come before her and was seizing her hands; his fingers, after their first grasp, moved up her arms. “Cynthia; my own Cynthia,” he murmured her name. At first he had held her in the glow of the light the better to see her; but now he carried her back with him into the shadow; and his arms were around her; he was crushing her against him, kissing her lips, her cheeks, her lips again, her hands from which he stripped the gloves.
She strained to compress her repulse of him. He was not rough nor sensuous; he simply was possessing himself of her in full passion of love. If she were Cynthia, who loved this man, she would have clung in his embrace in the abandonment of joy. Ruth tried to think of that and control herself not to repel him; but she could not. Reflexes, beyond her obedience, opposed him.
Ever since Milicent had informed her that he was in Paris, Ruth had been forming plans for every contingency of their meeting; but this encounter had introduced elements different from any expectations. If this visit to the street of the Holy Fathers was to be his last one before leaving Paris, then perhaps she had better keep him out upon the street in the dark and play at being Cynthia until she could dismiss him. She must feel—or at least she must betray—no recoil of outrage at his taking her into his arms. He had had that right with Cynthia Gail. Though he and Cynthia had quarreled—and Ruth had never mended that quarrel—yet Cynthia and he had loved. Too much had passed between them to put them finally apart. And now, as Ruth felt his arms enfolding her, his lips on hers, and his breath whispering to her his passionate love, she knew that Cynthia could not have forbidden this.
He took Ruth’s struggle as meant to tempt his strength and he laughed joyously as, very gently, he overpowered her. She tried to cease to struggle; she tried to laugh as Cynthia would have laughed; but she could not. “Don’t!” she found herself resisting. “Don’t!”