Page:Ruth of the U.S.A. (IA ruthofusa00balm).pdf/212

 but I know that before long you will be prouder to be an American than you ever dreamed you could be!"

Part of that pride was coming to him, then, incredible as it would have seemed to him even a few days ago, when in the midst of disaster unparalleled and due to the tardiness of his country. For, though his country had not come in till so late, now it was offering itself in a spirit unknown in national relations before.

When they had finished their supper, he brought her back to her work and himself returned to his airdrome. The next day Ruth found a chance to journey to Paris.

For information—accurate, dependable word of German intentions and German preparations for the next attack—was the paramount essential now. This first assault at last was stopped; but only after tremendous catastrophe; and the Germans still possessed superiority in physical strength as great as before. And they owned, even more than before, confidence in themselves, while the allies' at least had been shaken. The Germans kept also, undoubtedly, the same powers of secrecy which had enabled them to launch their tremendous onslaught as a surprise to the allies, while they themselves accurately had reckoned the allied strength and dispositions.

Ruth did not hope, by herself, to change all that. The wild dreams of the girl who had taken up the bold enterprise offered her in Chicago, had become tempered by experience, which let her know the limits within which one person might work in this war; but the probability that she would be unable to do greatly only increased her will to do whatever she could.

Thus she returned to Paris to endeavor to encounter