"No. Bad as you are, you are better than no one; and I must have stimulants. I say, a little more champagne."
Kitty filled up the glass again. He sipped it.
"It doesn't seem to pull me round," he said then. "I want brandy; champagne is not strong enough. Do you know what it is, little girl, to sink?"
"No," said Kitty.
"Don't you?—to sink right through the tent, and through the ground beneath? That's what I feel. I am slipping, slipping over the brink. That is it—slipping over the brink, little girl. How dark it is getting! Why don't you come near me? Can you hate a dying soldier who has given his life for his country?"
"No," said Kitty, and she suddenly burst into tears. When her tears came she fell forward against the soldier's bed, and took hold of one of his hands and laid her cheek against it.
"No; forgive me," she said. "I—don't—hate you any longer."
Her words troubled the major; a new look came into his face.
"If you forgive me, little Kitty," he said, "I wonder if God Almighty will?"
"Let's ask Him," said Kitty.