Page:Ruth of the U.S.A. (IA ruthofusa00balm).pdf/248

 her answer now or only that part of it which George Byrne had believed?

She arose and went to the door and saw that it was firmly closed.

"Do you remember, Gerry," she asked when she returned "that first time we talked together in Mrs. Corliss' conservatory, that I said I woke up that morning trying to imagine myself knowing you—without the slightest hope that I ever could?"

"I remember you said something like that, Cynthia."

"Did you ever wonder how that might be? I mean that I should have been invited to Mrs. Corliss' and that same morning not imagine that I could meet you?"

"I suppose I thought Mrs. Corliss hadn't called you till late," Gerry said.

"She never called me, myself, at all. A girl—a strange girl, whom I had never seen—a girl named Cynthia Gail had been asked. But she had died before that day; so I came in her place."

Gerry drew a little nearer intently. "Because your names were the same; you were related to her?"

"No; I wasn't related to her at all; and our names were entirely different."

"But you"

"Took her name, yes, I did."

"And her passport?" He was thinking now, Ruth knew, of her ruined passport and how he had advised her about having a new picture put on it and how it had been, not by her own credentials but by his requesting Agnes Ertyle to vouch for her, that she had been accepted in France.