It is the first time an open acknowledgment of their love has passed between them. Mona is confused for a moment. Then she says, “Do you _want_ me to give you up, Oskar?” He does not answer. “To see you go away with the rest, and to think no more about you?” Still he does not answer. “Do you?” “God knows I don’t,” he says, and at the next moment he is gone. _TWELFTH CHAPTER_ Three nights later Oskar comes again. As usual he will not enter the house, so she has to stand at the door to speak to him. His eyes are bright and he is eager and excited. “Mona, I have something to suggest to you.” “Yes?” “It’s not to be wondered at that people brought up in a little island like this should have these hard feelings and narrow ideas. But the English are not like that. They are a great, great people, and if you are willing to go with me to England....” “What are you thinking of, Oskar?” He tells her more about himself than she has ever yet heard. He is an electrical engineer, and before being brought to Knockaloe he had been chief engineer to a big English company on the Mersey, at a salary of a thousand a year. When the war broke out his sympathies had been dead against his own country, chiefly because of “that quack, the Kaiser.” “Oskar!” “It’s true. I can’t account for it. I was secretly ashamed of it in those days, but I would have joined up in the British Army if they would have had me. They wouldn’t!” On the contrary, the authorities had called him up for internment. Then his firm, which had been loathe to lose him, had tried to obtain his exemption. They had failed, and when the time came for him to go the chairman of the company had said: “Heine, we’re sorry you have to leave us, but if you want to come back when the war is over, your place will be waiting for you.” “But could he ... do you think it possible....” “Certain! Oh, he’s a great old man, Mona, and if he were to break his word to me I should lose faith in human nature. So I ... I....” “Well?” “I intend to write to him, telling him I shall soon be at liberty, and if you will only agree to go with me....” He stops, seeing tears in her eyes. Then, in a husky voice, he says: “I’m sorry to ask you to leave your island.” “It is turning me out, Oskar; that’s the bitterest part of it.” “Then you _will_ go to England with me?” “Yes,” she says, and he hurries off in high spirits to write his letter. During the next week Mona tries hard to feel happy, but little by little vague doubts oppress her. One day she overhears scraps of a conversation between the Commandant and the Governor, who are arranging for the breaking up of the camp and the disposal of its portable property. As they stand in the avenue they are talking about the Peace Conference. “It’s a pity,” the Commandant is saying, “but it has always been my experience that the first years of a peace are worse than the last years of a war.”