Page:Ruth of the U.S.A. (IA ruthofusa00balm).pdf/229

 "That's a lie! Why, I've been hearing from her myself."

"You've been hearing from me. I'm Cynthia Gail, I tell you. I've been Cynthia Gail since January."

He caught another glimpse of her face; and his impetuousness to start to the Rue des Saints Pères collapsed, pitifully. "Where shall we go?" he asked.

Ruth gazed about, uncertainly; she had not attended to their direction; and now she found herself in a strange, narrow street of tiny shops and apartments, interrupted a half square ahead by a chasm of ruins and strewn débris, where one of those random shells from the German long-range gun, or a bomb dropped from a night-raiding Gotha recently had struck. The destruction had been done sufficiently long ago, however, for the curiosity of the neighborhood to have been already satisfied and for all treasures to have been removed. The ruin was fenced off, therefore, and was unguarded. Ruth gazed into the shell of the building and Byrne, glancing in also, saw that in the rear were apartments half wrecked and deserted, but which offered sanctuary from the street.