Page:Ruth of the U.S.A. (IA ruthofusa00balm).pdf/226

 "Yes."

"He loves you?"

"I don't know."

"What's he said to you?"

"Nothing—about loving me."

"But he loves you, all right; he must, if he knows you!" Byrne returned in pitiful loyalty to his Cynthia. "How much has gone on between you?" he demanded.

Ruth related to him much about her meetings with Gerry, while they walked side by side about the Paris streets. A dozen times she was on the point of breaking down and telling him all the truth; when his hand reached toward hers, instinctively, and suddenly pulled away; when they passed a light and, venturing to gaze up, she saw his face as he looked down at her; when he asked her questions or offered short, hoarse interjections, she almost cried out to him that she was a fraud; the girl he had loved, and who she was saying had turned from him, was dead and had been dead all that time during which he had felt the difference; she had never met Gerry, Hull at all.

"What are you stopping for?" he asked her at one of these times. "Thinking about the Sangamon River?"

That was the Illinois river which flowed close by Cynthia Gail's home. And Ruth knew from his voice that by the river Cynthia and he first had known love.

"Yes," Ruth said; but now her courage completely failed her.

"What did you say to me, then; oh, what did we both say, Cynthia?"