Page:Ruth of the U.S.A. (IA ruthofusa00balm).pdf/79

 deception distressed her more than all the previous ones she had played. She realized that, in order to understand what she had said, he was trying to understand her; and she wished that she could tell him that she was Ruth Alden, working, only as late as that morning, in Hilton Brothers' office.

"You're not like anyone else here," he said, without pressing his inquiry further. "Hub Lennon told me that he had a different sort of girl with him. These other people are all like myself; you saw the way they took what I said. They didn't take it as said against them; they've been in the war, heart and soul, since the first. You've only come in when we—I mean America," he corrected with a wince, "came in. I think I felt that without knowing it; that's why I talked to you more than to all the rest together. That's why I needed to see you again; you're more of an American, I guess, than anyone else here."

He said that with a touch of bitterness which prevented her offering reply.

"You haven't hurt me as me," he denied. "If you just told me that my country believed I was wrong and had been fighting for something lower than it was willing to fight for until April, 1917, why that would be all right. But what you have said is against the finest, noblest, most chivalrous men the world ever knew—a good many of them dead, now, fallen on the field of honor, Americans—Americans of the highest heart, Norman Prince, Kiffen Rockwell, Vic Chapman, and the rest! If being American means to wait, after you see beasts like the Germans murdering women and children, until you've sat-