Page:Ruth of the U.S.A. (IA ruthofusa00balm).pdf/81

 Except for the chocolate and little cakes served at Mrs. Corliss', she had eaten nothing since breakfast; but she scarcely thought to be hungry or considered her weariness now. What a day had been given to her; and how frightfully she had bungled it! She had met Gerry Hull, and he had found interest in her, and she had taken advantage of his interest only to offend, and insult him, and turn him away! The Germans, upon whose support she must depend in all her plans, had given her a first definite order; and she had completely disregarded it in her absorption in offending Gerry Hull. At any moment, therefore, they might take action against her—either direct action of their own, or give information which would expose her to the American authorities, and bring about her arrest and disgrace. A miserable end, now, not only to her great resolves of that morning, but to any possible rehabilitation with Gerry Hull! For if that morning she had dreamed of meeting him, now this night a thousand times intensified she thought of him again and again—constantly, it seemed. And yet she would not have taken back a word of that which had angered him and turned him away.

She got up at last and went down alone to dinner; and, when nothing more happened, she returned to her own room, where after more carefully going over all Cynthia Gail's things, she took plain paper and an envelope and wrote a short note to Sam Hilton, informing him that most important personal matters suddenly had forced her to give up her position with him; she wrote the landlady at her boarding house that she had been called home and would either return or send for her trunk later. She mailed these herself and went to bed.