“I knew you were up to something, Ruth,” he murmured under his breath. “Ruth,” he repeated her name, “Ruth Alden! That fits you better somehow; and what you’ve been doing fits you better, too. But—” he realized suddenly that this was acknowledging belief in her—belief beyond his right to have faith in this girl who once on the boat had tried to save his life and who, upon the battle field, had saved him and at frightful risk to herself. But he was not thinking chiefly of that; he was thinking of their intimacies from the first and particularly of that day when, after she had saved him from the wreck of his machine, they had driven away from the battle together.
“Only two things have happened to me since I went on board the Ribot which you don’t know all about,” she was adding, “and which had any connection with the secret I was keeping from you. One was my meeting with De Trevenac. He stopped me on the street, supposing I was a German agent. He gave me the orders which I told you he gave to someone else.”
“I was supposing,” Gerry replied, “that the entire truth about De Trevenac was something like that.”
“You know the entire truth about him now,” Ruth said. “What I told you before I specifically said was not the entire truth.”
Gerry winced a little as he turned toward her. “Don’t think I’m holding that against you—if you’re Ruth Alden, as you say. Only if you’re German——”
“German!” Ruth refused the word with a gasp. “Gerry, you can’t believe that.”
“What was the other episode?” he asked quickly; and now she told him about George Byrne; of her attempt to continue to deceive him; of his mistaking her for his love; then his discovery of the truth and their talk in the ruined house; of Byrne’s accusation and arrest of her; of the irruption of the German and his attack; his repetition of the order to her to go to Switzerland; and of her waiting since.
“I told him when he accused me and I could not make him believe, that you would know about me, Gerry!” she cried. “I thought everything would be all right if only I could get you! And oh—oh I’ve wanted you to come ever since!”
She did not mean to say that, he saw; it was not possible that this cry was planned and practiced for effect. It burst so unbidden, so unguarded from her breast; and seized upon him like her hand—her small, soft, strong little hand—closing upon his heart. It told to him a thousand times better than all the words she had just said, of her loneliness and fears and dreads fought out all by herself in her wild, solitary, desperate adventure. And Gerry, gazing down at her, did not ask himself again whether he believed. Instead he saw her once more as first he had seen her at Mrs. Corliss’, and his heart compressed as never it had before as he thought of her, a little office girl making twenty-five dollars a week, coming to that big, rich house not knowing who or what she would meet there and standing up so singly and alone for her country and her faith; he saw her again as she was on the Ribot, surrounded by new terrors and with perils to her increasing day by day and playing her part so well; and now passions and sensations which he had fought and had tried to put off, overwhelmed him again. He felt her, wet and small with all her clothing clinging to her as he had taken her from a sailor’s arms and she, looking up at him, had tried so bravely and defiantly to deny what her cries had just confessed to all the ship—that she was his; she had gone into the sea for him. He saw and heard and felt her hands upon him again as he lay helpless under the wreck of his airplane and she worked beside him, coolly and well, though machine-gun bullets were striking all about her; and she had freed him. The sensation of their ride together returned while he had been almost helpless in the seat of the truck watching her drive and listening while she talked to him of another man whom she had liked—the English officer, who had been killed, “1583.”
As Gerry had envied that other man his comradeship with this girl, now jealousy rose for the man who, for the wanton moments of his tragic mistake, had possessed himself of her. She had not wished it; she had submitted to his arms, to his kisses only perforce. She had said, indeed, that she had not quite succeeded in submitting; and Gerry found himself rejoicing in that. But another man had held her; another had kissed her in full passion; and Gerry was dazed to find now how he felt at that.