Page:Ruth of the U.S.A. (IA ruthofusa00balm).pdf/150

 besides De Trevenac—twenty they'd never even looked into. How did you know about him?"

The discoveries had brought Gerry to her almost in awe; and there surged through her an impulse to tell him how she knew and all about herself—to end to him and with him the long, every-waking-minute, every-sleeping-minute strain of being an impostor, of facing exposure, of playing a part. She had not let herself feel how that strain pulled upon her, how lonely and frightened she was at times, how ill it made her—sick physically as well as sick at heart—to write her cheerful, newsy letters to Cynthia Gail's parents, and to read the letters written by mother and father to Cynthia, and to which she must again reply; to write to the little boy in Decatur as his sister would write; to write also—and in ways this was the hardest—to the man who had loved Cynthia Gail and who, believing that Cynthia was alive and she was Cynthia, was pouring out his love to her in letters to which also she must reply and either make him think that the girl whom he loved, and who had loved him, still lived, and would not forgive him a single hasty word, or else that she lived, and still loved him, and would be his in his arms again.

For a moment the impulse almost overmastered Ruth; but then she had the better of it. If she told even this man who might trust her—might, but how could she be sure?—she put the direction of her fate in other hands. If she had told him about herself at Mrs. Corliss' or upon the boat, he would have prevented her from proceeding alone as she had; he would have believed her unable to best accomplish things by herself, or he would have