Page:Ruth of the U.S.A. (IA ruthofusa00balm).pdf/227

 This was no test or challenge of Ruth; it was simply a cry from his heart.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways, I love thee to the depth and height. . ..

He was starting to quote something which they used to repeat together.

"Go on, Cynthia!" he charged.

"I can't," Ruth cried.

"You can't—after you found it and taught it to me?  ' I love thee with the breath, smiles, tears, of all my life, he quoted bitterly to her. "Let me look at you better, Cynthia!"

They were passing a light and he drew her closer to it.

"What has happened to you?" he whispered to her aghast when he had searched her through and through with his eyes. Then, "Who are you?"

He had made, he realized, some frightful mistake; how he could have come to make it, he did not know. "You're not Cynthia Gail!" he cried. For an instant, that discovery was enough for him. The agony which he had been suffering this last half hour was not real; the girl whom he had found on the street never had been his; they had both been going about only in some grotesque error.

"No; I'm not Cynthia Gail," Ruth told him.

"Then where is she?" he demanded. "Where is my Cynthia?" His hands were upon Ruth and he shook her a little in the passion of his demand. He could not even