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 her, that she was thinking that Hubert would have trusted her just the same.

Was she manipulating him now, Gerry wondered? Was it possible that this girl had been playing with and utilizing him in what had just passed? Had George Byrne come and had all happened which she had told him or was it conceivable that she had contrived the whole story, or distorted it for effect upon him to anticipate accusation against her from other quarters? Had Hubert really found out about her; or was that too invented for the sake of flicking him into blind espousal of her plans? Flashes of such sort fought with every natural reaction to remembrance of his own close comradeship with her. Impossible; impossible! his impulses iterated to him. But his four years in France had taught him that the impossible in relations, in understandings, in faiths and associations between man and man and man and woman had ceased to exist. In this realization, at least, his situation was truly distinct from Hubert's. He believed in her; at least, he wished to tear his hands apart from their clench together behind him; he longed to extend them to her; he burned at thought of lifting her again and feeling her weight in his arms; and when he looked at her lips, it fired flame to his; yet

"I don't flatter myself that I can control the report which is being compiled about you, Ruth Alden," he said. "What I have said, and may say, will only be a part of the data which will determine what's to be done with you. For you realize, now, that one thing or the other's to be done."

"I realize that, Gerry," she said.