"You think so?" said Strause.
"I know it, Major Strause. On no other condition do I marry you."
Strause's face turned livid.
"And if you don't go," said Mollie, "then I will go, and I will tell an ugly story where you have told an ugly one. I will tell of a day when I found a young officer of the North Essex Light Infantry lying by the roadside insensible; but not drunk, Major Strause, not drunk, but drugged! I, a nurse, can prove that. I myself saw Captain Keith. It was there I found him, and it was then I first learned to love him. I will tell the story just as he told it to me. Your lie can be refuted with my truth—here, now, in Ladysmith. Choose, Major Strause. Set your ugly lie right; blot it out as though it had never existed. I don't tell you how to do it; I only say it must be done. And if you do it, and the rumour dies away, and Gavon Keith is known to be what he is—brave of the brave, good of the good, pure and honourable of the pure and honourable—then I give myself away. I have done that which God meant me to do, and my pain and my misery mean nothing at all. I marry you, and I do not reproach you; and I try, God helping me, to be a good wife to you, if we get away from Ladysmith. Now go; you know what you have to do. You have to choose. If you don't do it—and I shall soon find out—then I do what I said I would do, and you go under for ever."
CHAPTER XXIV.
TRUE TO HER PROMISE.
After the bursting of the shell over the roof of the Town Hall hospital, it was decided that it was no longer a safe hospital for the sick. Some were removed to the Congregational Chapel; others to a camp specially provided for their safety; and others, again, to the field hospital at Intombi. Mollie, to her great distress, was ordered to Intombi. She went with a number of the sick and wounded, and she tried, in the full absorption of her new duties, to forget the anxieties which surrounded her personal life. In some ways this was easy, in others it was difficult. She was now effectually parted from Katherine Hunt and from Kitty. She was also not likely to see either Captain Keith or Major Strause; for although they might manage to get to Intombi, the way there, lying as it did through the enemy's lines, was difficult.
Meanwhile she wondered what the major had decided to do. She resolved, as far as she was concerned, not to leave a stone unturned to extricate Keith from the dilemma which surrounded him. But having been ordered so unexpectedly to Intombi, the strong step which she had meant to take, supposing the major did not comply with her wishes, was now almost impossible to carry out. Meanwhile her duties absorbed every moment of her time. The hospital at Intombi consisted of about two hundred bell tents, together with one or two marquees which the medical staff used. A train went from the town every day to the hospital camp. It took the wounded to the hospital, and also took what supplies could possibly be spared.