Page:Ruth of the U.S.A. (IA ruthofusa00balm).pdf/233

 Desperately her mind groped for a way to arrange the events of that truth in a way to make him believe; but each moment of delay only made her task more impossible. He had roused from the suspicion, which had begun to inflame him when they were yet on the street, to a certainty that the girl whom he loved had been foully, dealt by.

"That what?" he demanded again.

So Ruth told him about herself, and the first meeting with Gerry Hull, and the pencil boxes, and the beggar on State Street. She did not proceed without interruptions now; he challenged and catechized her. If he had refused her whole story, it would not have been so bad; but he was believing part of it—the part which fitted his passions. He believed that the Germans had found the body of Cynthia Gail, and he believed more than that. He believed that they had killed her, and he cried out to Ruth to tell him when, and how. He believed that the Germans, having killed Cynthia, had tried to make use of her identity and her passport; and that they had succeeded! His hands were upon Ruth once more, holding her sternly, and firmly.

"I put you under arrest," he said to her hoarsely, "as accessory in the murder of Cynthia Gail and as a German spy."

And yet, as he held her there before him in the dim light of the tallow wick in the sconce upon the wall, she seemed to him, for flashes of time, to be the girl he accused her of having killed.

"Cynthia; where are you?" he pleaded with her once as though, within Ruth, was the soul of his love whom