Page:Ruth of the U.S.A. (IA ruthofusa00balm).pdf/157

 discussed; but, since Russia's absolutely out, that's the fact."

"I know," she said. "But what I meant was that you, and just a few others, aren't the only Americans here now. Oh, I've been able to understand why you've flown and fought as you have, why your friends are almost all fallen now and you, only by the grace of our God, are left! I think I understood some of your feeling even before I knew you and heard you speak. You and your friends whom you thought I insulted—you, for a while, had to do the fighting for all America; a score or so of you had to do, you felt, for a hundred million of us who wouldn't come in! But we're coming now; a good many of us are here!"

"Many?" he repeated. "A couple of hundred thousand among millions. And the German millions are almost ready to strike! Forgive me, I didn't mean to scold you ever again for America; but—oh, you'll see! The husbands, and fathers, and the boys of France, the husbands, and fathers, and the boys of England taking the blow again, giving themselves to the guns to save us all while our young men watch!"

She gazed up at him, but stayed silent now. Terror seized her that she had done only harm, that she had stirred him to greater regardlessness. His anger against her people, whom she defended, had—as at that first time—banished his feeling for her. When he gave her his hand again, he barely touched her fingers; and he was gone.

Returning that night to his squadron at the front, he wrote her an apology; but, after reading it over, tore it