As Mollie spoke she clasped Kitty in her arms, and laid the girl's tired, frightened head on her breast. There came another sharp, very sharp report, and the searchlight suddenly lit up the windows of Kitty's room. She gave a terrified scream.
"I wish I had never come to Ladysmith. I wish I could get away."
"Too late for that now; you are a little soldier, and must stand to your guns."
"I am a coward; I am the sort of soldier who runs away," said the girl.
Mollie was silent until the noise of the explosion ceased; then she said quietly,--
"This may mean more patients for me; I must hurry off again. What did you really want with me?"
Kitty raised her head and looked full at her sister.
"I have got something to confess," she said.
"I came back to the hospital to-day because--not because I am a soldier of the Queen, not because I wanted to help anybody, but because--"
"What do you mean? To watch me, your sister!"
As Kitty said the last words, she forgot her fears with regard to Long Tom; she forgot everything but the wild passion, the jealous, miserable rage, which filled her. She sprang to her feet and faced her sister, she clasped her little stained fingers together and looked with her white face into Mollie's face, and then she hurled out her words impulsively.
"You love him--you know you do! And he loves you, and he--he is engaged to me. You have taken him from me. Oh, how I hate you! Oh, I shall die with misery!"
[Illustration: "'_You love him--you know you do!_'"]
Mollie's face turned very nearly as white as Kitty's; she did not speak at all for a moment. Kitty, having hurled out her reproaches, waited, expecting Mollie to speak. Mollie still was silent. There came another screaming report, another explosion. Kitty was deaf to it. That fact alone impressed Mollie. She looked with almost reverence at her sister now. How great and strong, after all, were her love and her passion!
"It is true," said Kitty. "Why don't you speak? why don't you speak? You know it is true. I saw it in your eyes, and I saw it in his eyes; and if you were to tell me a thousand, thousand times that you don't love him, I would not believe you."
"But I am not going to tell you any such thing," replied Mollie.