Page:Ruth of the U.S.A. (IA ruthofusa00balm).pdf/99

 a cabin and almost run into Agnes Ertyle and Gerry Hull going about the deck in the other direction; or she would pass them, seated close together and with Lady Agnes all bundled up in steamer rugs, and Ruth would see them suddenly stop talking when she and her escort came close, and they would look away at the sea as though they had been just looking at the water all the time.

He would sit down beside Ruth, too; and he would take her around and around the deck, tramping glowing, spray-splattered miles with him. They talked a lot; but now they never really said anything to each other. And it seemed to Ruth that each throb of those ceaseless engines, which thrust them ever nearer and nearer to France, made what she felt and believed more outrageous to him.

One afternoon, when the wireless happened to be tuned to catch the wavelength of messages sweeping over the seas from some powerful sending station in Germany, they picked up the enemy's boasts for the day; and among them was the announcement that the famous American "ace," sergeant pilot Paul Crosby, had been shot down and killed by a German flyer on the Lorraine front. It chanced that Gerry Hull and Agnes Ertyle were in the main saloon near where Ruth also was when some busybody, who had heard this news, brought it to Gerry Hull and asked him if he had known Paul Crosby.

Ruth knew that Gerry Hull and Paul Crosby had joined the French flying forces together; they had flown in the same escadrille for more than a year. She did not turn about, as others were doing, to watch Gerry Hull when he got this news; but she could not help hearing his simple