"What are you doing there?" he said vaguely.
"Praying?" said he. "Pray so that I can hear you."
I was well startled at this. I had prayed with papa; with no other, and before no other, in all my life. And here were rows of beds on all sides of me, wide-awake careless eyes in some of their occupants; nurses and attendants moving about; no privacy; no absolute stillness. I thought I could not; then I knew I must; and then all other things faded into insignificance before the work Jesus came to do and had given me to help. I knelt down, not without hands and face growing cold in the effort; but as soon as I was once fairly speaking to my Lord, I ceased to think or care who else was listening to me. There was a deep stillness around; I knew that; the attendants paused in their movements, and words and work I think were suspended during the few minutes when I was on my knees. When I got up, the sick man's eyes were closed. I sat down with my face in my hands, feeling as if I had received a great wrench; but presently Miss Yates came with a whispered request that I would do something that was required just then for somebody. Work set me all right very soon. But when after a while I came round to Preston again, I found him in a rage.
"What _has_ come over you?" he said, looking at me with a complication of frowns. I was at a loss for the reason, and requested him to explain himself.
"You are not Daisy!" he said. "I do not know you any more. What has happened to you?"
"Mean!" said he with a fling. "What do _you_ mean? I don't know you."
I thought this paroxysm might as well pass off by itself, like another; and I kept quiet.
"What were you doing just now," said he savagely, "by that soldier's bedside?"
"That soldier? He is a dying man, Preston."
"Let him die!" he cried. "What is that to you? You are Daisy Randolph. Do you remember whose daughter you are? _You_ making a spectacle of yourself, for a hundred to look at!"
But this shot quite overreached its mark. Preston saw it had not touched me.
"You did not use to be so bold," he began again. "You were delicate to an exquisite fault. I would never have believed that _you_ would have done anything unwomanly. What has taken possession of you?"