"There's only one thing can save you for mate in five moves. I know it isn't the proper thing to be chatting over chess, but I like it. I'm chatty by nature."
"Only one course open to save me from destruction?" she murmured.
"Are you sure, darling, you're only saying it to break the shock gently? Are you sure your eyes are all right?"
Camilla stared at the blankness of her vanished dream.
"Come along, Sister; put your back into it," chuckled Robin McKay.
She held her brows tight with her hands and strove to concentrate her tortured mind on the board. Her heart was in agony of desolation. The soft murmurings she could not but overhear pierced her brain. The poignant shame of her disillusionment burned her from head to foot. Again she heard the girl's pleading voice:
At the end of her tether, she cried: "The only way out! I give it up!" and swept the pieces over the board.
She rose, stood transfixed with horror and sense of outrage. Harry Shileto, propped on pillows, was unwinding the bandages from his mangled head. Devils within her clamored for hysterical outcry. But something physical happened and checked the breath that was about to utter his Christian name. The boy had gripped her arm with all his young strength in passionate remonstrance.
"I'm sorry," she said, and he released her.
So she passed swiftly round the boy's bed to that of the foolish patient and arrested his hand.
"Major Shileto, what on earth are you doing?"
The girl, who was very pretty, turned on her an alarmed and tearful face.
"It was my fault, Sister. Oh, can I believe him?"
"You can believe me, at any rate," she replied with asperity, swiftly readjusting the bandage. "Major Shileto's sight is unaffected. But if I had not been here and he had succeeded in taking off his dressings, God knows what would have happened. Major Shileto, I put you on your honor not to do such a silly thing again."
"All right, Sister," he said, with a little shame-faced twitch of the lips. "_Parole d'officier_."
"Do forgive me, Sister. We have only been married five months--when he was last home on leave--and, you understand, don't you, what it would have meant to me if----"
"Of course I do. Anyhow, you can be perfectly reassured. But I must warn you," she whispered, and looked through narrowed eyelids into the girl's eyes; "he may be dreadfully disfigured."