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 her father. She was thinking of herself, not as Ruth Alden, but as actually being Cynthia Gail now. It was a great advantage to be able to fancy and to dream; she was Cynthia Gail; she must be Cynthia henceforth or she could not continue what she was doing even here alone by herself; and surely she could not keep up before others unless, in every relation, she thought of herself as that other girl.

Letter received; it's like you, but by all means go ahead; I'll back you. Love.Father.

That told nothing except that she had, in some recent letter, suggested an evidently adventurous deviation from her first plan.

The first letter from Decatur which Cynthia Gail now opened was from her mother—a sweet, concerned motherly letter of the sort which that girl, who had been Ruth Alden, well knew and which made her cry a little. It told absolutely nothing about anyone whom Cynthia might meet in Chicago except the one line, "I'm very glad that Mrs. Malcolm Corliss has telephoned to you." The second letter from Decatur, written a day earlier than the other, was from her father; from this Cynthia gained chiefly the information—which the Germans had not supplied her—that her father had accompanied her to Chicago, established her at the hotel and then been called back home by business. He had been "sorry to leave her alone" but of course she was meeting small risks compared to those she was to run. The letter from Rockford, which had arrived only that morning, was from George—that meant George Byrne. She had been engaged to