Page:Ruth of the U.S.A. (IA ruthofusa00balm).pdf/255

 essentials. Of course I've prepared a German-American name and identity for myself. If they really know anything in Germany about the girl whom their Chicago people sent here, they'll have me; but if they don't, I'll get on. That's the part I've really been preparing myself for all these months, Gerry; just being Cynthia Gail here was—nothing."

He felt himself jerk and recoil at that. Had she been playing a part with him all this time as well as to others; had this being his been only a rôle which she had acted?

"I see," he said to her curtly.

"Oh, not nothing to me, Gerry, in the things I've had to do when I wrote Cynthia's mother and father and when I had to write George Byrne and when I've been seeing her brother. I meant that deceiving Hubert and his aunt and her friends here and the rest and you, Gerry, was—" she did not finish.

"Quite simple," he completed for her with relief. So the deception with him had not been hard because, in what would have been hard, she had not deceived him. "Where's Hubert?" Gerry questioned now.

"I don't know. I don't think he's in Paris, now."

"You haven't heard from him recently?"

"He sent me several postals when I was at Mirevaux; I've not heard from him since."

"Then he knows nothing whatever about this?"

"He doesn't know that George Byrne found me, Gerry; but he knows I'm not Cynthia Gail."

"Ah! So you told him some time ago, did you?" Jealousy of Hubert now leaped in him; Hubert had known of her what he could not know.