“Ha, ha, ha! So this is another of them, is it? She’s in the same case herself, they’re telling me. Oh, I’ve heard of you, my lady. You used to think great things of yourself, but when the parson marries you there’ll be three of you before him at the altar, as the saying is. Ha, ha, ha!” The men laugh and some of the women begin to titter. A harder blow than she had dealt the soldier had fallen upon Mona. She stands for a moment as if turned to stone, then picks up her bag, sweeps through the crowd and hastens away. So this is what people think of her! After all the struggling of her heart and the travailing of her soul, this is what people think! Oh, God! Oh, God! She had been sleeping badly of late, but that night she hardly sleeps at all. Towards the grey dawning she has a sense of Robbie being in the room with her. He is wearing his officer’s uniform, just as in her mind’s eye, when she felt so proud, she had often seen him. She knows he is dead, and she thinks this is his spirit, and it has come to reproach her. “Mona, if anybody had told me three years ago that such a thing would happen I should have killed him. Yes, by God, I should have killed him.” Mona tries to speak, but cannot. “Rob....” “Lord, how proud I was of you! When they told me I had won the Victoria Cross I laughed and said, ‘My sister would have won it long ago if she had been here.’ Nobody hated the Germans as you used to do, but now that you’ve given yourself to one of them....” “Rob ... Rob....” “What else could you have done it for? Everybody believes it, too. Father believed it, and it was that that killed him.” Again Mona tries to cry out and cannot. “Hide yourself away, Mona. Hide your sin and shame in some miserable corner of the earth where nobody will know you. You’ve broken my heart, and now....” “Robbie! Robbie!” Her own voice awakens her. The rising sun shines on her as she sits up in bed in her wretchedness. Only a dream! Yet it has told her everything. This is the end. Here has her road finally led her. Her love is doomed. Life, as well as the world, is now closed to her. But to stand in the pillory as long as she lives for a sin she has not committed--it is too much! Better die--a thousand times better! When she asks herself how, it seems so simple. And when she thinks of the consequences they seem so slight. There will be nobody to care--nobody except Oskar. He will be better without her, and can go home when his time comes. Either of them could get on alone. It is only together that they are not allowed to live, and since only one of them can live, it is so much better it should be Oskar. There is a pang in the thought that Oskar will suffer. Yes, he will be sorry. But he will get over it. And when he is at home and the first pang of losing her is past and he wants to be happy, being so young and such a _man_, perhaps ... who knows.... But no, she cannot think of that. _FIFTEENTH CHAPTER_