"Yes, I think we can," she answered. "Come."
She went before him. He did not know whether he was frightened or whether hope filled his heart at her curious manner and at the expression in her face. As soon as ever they got into the lobby, she turned and faced him.
"Major Strause," she said, "you have won. You have been doing the devil's work, and you have won. On certain conditions I will promise to be your wife."
"Oh!" said the major, "is it true? Will you? Oh, I cannot realize it!"
He trembled all over; his face turned ghastly white. He looked as if he meant to devour her with kisses, but she held up a restraining hand.
"No," she said, "you don't kiss me—you don't make love to me; but I will be your promised wife. When the siege is over, if we are alive, then I will marry you. I am your promised wife—but no courting in Ladysmith. That is one of the conditions."
"I submit," he said. "I shall court you in my own heart; I shall think of you when I lie down and when I rise up. You will be my good angel in the battlefield; you will help me when I am starving; you will bring me luck. I shall escape out of this net spread by the fowler. I shall escape, and so will you, brave Nurse Mollie. And we will marry, and be happy; yes, we will be happy!"
"Leave that to the future," said Mollie; "we have to do with the present. I yield to you because I must, and because the weapon you carry is too mighty—because you are too cruel. But I am not going to reproach you; I am going to give you my conditions. You may not accede to them. On no other conditions do I marry you."
"Make your own conditions, my darling; whatever you say shall be done. I would go through fire and water for you."
"Major Strause, you have spread a black, black lie against one of the bravest officers in Her Majesty's service. You have spread that lie now in Ladysmith. You have got to eat your own words. You have got to go to the sources from whence the ugly lie has arisen, and clean them out, and put them straight, and allow the truth—God's truth—to go through them. You have got to go to every man who now suspects Gavon Keith, and tell those men that it was a foul lie, and that Gavon is as innocent as an unborn babe of the crime you imputed to him."