“I didn’t know what I was doing, Dicky,” he make apologetic answer.  “It—­knocked the wind out of me.  You see, I—­I’d never thought of that before.”

He began to whimper again.  Dick swallowed down something that tried to escape him.

“A bit of an ass, aren’t you, Robin?” he said instead.  “You know as well as I do that there isn’t a word of truth in it.  Anyhow—­the woman I love—­isn’t—­that sort of woman.”

Robin shifted his position uneasily.  There was that in the words that vaguely stirred him.  Dick had never spoken in that strain before.  Slowly, with a certain caution, he lifted his tear-stained face and peered up at his brother in the fitful candle-light.

“You do—­want to marry Miss Moore then, Dicky?” he asked diffidently.

Dick looked straight back at him; his eyes shone with a sombre gleam that came and went.  For several seconds he sat silent, then very steadily he spoke.

“Yes, I want her all right, Robin, but there are some pretty big obstacles in the way.  I may get over them—­and I may not.  Time will prove.”

His lips closed upon the words, and became again a single hard line.  His look went beyond Robin and grew fixed.  The boy watched him dumbly with awed curiosity.

Suddenly Dick moved, gripped him by the shoulders and pulled him upwards.  “There!  Go to bed!” he said.  “And don’t take any notice of what Jack says for the future!  Don’t fight him either!  Understand?  Leave him alone!”

Robin blundered up obediently.  Again there looked forth from his eyes the dog-like worship which he kept for Dick alone.  “I’ll do—­whatever you say, Dicky,” he said earnestly.  “I—­I’d die for you—­I would!” He spoke with immense effort, and all his heart was in the words.

Dick smiled at him quizzically.  “Instead of which I only want you to show a little ordinary common or garden sense,” he said.  “Think you can do that for me?”

“I’ll try, Dicky,” he said humbly.

“Yes, all right.  You try!” Dick said, and got up, more moved than he cared to show.  He turned to go, but paused to light Robin’s candle from his own.  “And don’t forget I’m—­rather fond of you, my boy!” he said, with a brief smile over his shoulder as he went away.

No, Robin was not likely to forget that, seeing that Dick’s love for him was his safeguard from all evil, and his love for Dick was the mainspring of his life.  But—­though his development was stunted and imperfect—­there were certain facts of existence which he was beginning slowly but surely to grasp.  And one of these—­before but dimly suspected—­he had realized fully to-night, a fact beyond all questioning learnt from Dick’s own lips.

Dick’s words:  “The woman I love,” had sunk deep—­deep into his soul.  And he knew with that intuition which cannot err that his love for Juliet was the greatest thing life held for him—­or ever could hold again.

And the driving force gripped Robin’s soul afresh as he lay wide-eyed to the smothering gloom of the night.  Whatever happened—­whoever suffered—­Dicky must have his heart’s desire.