Page:Ruth of the U.S.A. (IA ruthofusa00balm).pdf/197

 complaint is about as far from their attitude as anything you can think of."

"I know," Gerry said.

"They don't even—criticize. They just accept the odds, whatever they are; and go in with all of themselves as though they had a chance to hold and win and come out alive! They know they haven't; but you'd never guess it from them; and there's none of that 'We who are about to die salute you' idea in them either. They're sportsmen and gentlemen!"

"I know how they make you feel," Gerry said, watching her keenly again; the road thereabouts was bad and she couldn't even glance around to him. "Rather, you know now how they made me feel, I think."

She made no reply; so he went on. "If they'd say things out to us; if they had criticized us and damned us and told us we were lying down behind them, it wouldn't be so rotten hard to see them. But they don't. They just go in as you say; they feel they've a fight on which is their fight and they're going to fight it whether anyone else thinks it worth while to fight it or not or whether they have any chance for winning."

Ruth winked swiftly again to clear her eyes; and Gerry, watching her, wondered what particular experience his general praise had called up. He did not ask; but she told him.

1583' was just that sort of man, Gerry," she said, using his name for the first time as simply as he had spoken hers when she had crouched behind the shield of his engine with him.

"He's killed?" Gerry asked.