"If you say it, I need never tell you; if you don't say it, I mean to tell you, and now."
"Now, now," said Mollie—"now?"
"Sister Mollie, you are wanted," said Sister Eugenia, coming out of the hospital.
"Oh, for shame!" said Mollie, turning to Major Strause; "for shame, to keep me now to talk of these things.—Yes, Sister Eugenia."
"I will wait till you come out, or it will be the worse for Gavon Keith," said Major Strause, in a very firm voice.
Mollie looked at him in absolute terror. She went back to the hospital, where her services were urgently needed. But all the time, as she attended to this patient and the other, her thoughts were with Major Strause, and she remembered his words—"It will be the worse for Gavon Keith."
Presently she had a moment's leisure, and seeing the major standing outside, she went back to him.
"I am prepared to listen to you to the very end," she said. "All I ask of you is that you will be brief."
"I must tell you something that will pain you very much," he replied. "You think well of Keith? You have no reason to."
"Speak!" said Mollie.