He turned with the words, the impulse of the stricken creature urging him, and ignoring the remonstrance which Mrs. Rickett had barely begun he made headlong for the door, dragged it open, and was gone.

He went past his little playmate in the yard, shambling blindly for the open, deaf to the baby’s cry of welcome, insensible to everything but the bitter burden of his pain.  He slammed the gate behind him and set off at a lumbering run down the glaring road.

The evening sun smote full in his face as he went; but it might have been midnight, for he neither saw nor felt.  Instinct alone guided him—­the instinct of the wild creature, hunted by disaster, wounded to the heart, that must be alone with its agony and its fruitless strife against fate.

He went up the cliff-path, but he did not follow it far.  Something drew him down the narrow cleft that led to the spot where first he had seen her lying on the shingle dreaming with her head upon her arm.  He turned off the path to the place where he had crouched among the gorse-bushes and flung stones to scare her away, and stood there panting and gazing.

The memory of her, the gracious charm, the quick sympathy, went through him, pierced him.  He caught his breath as though he listened for the beloved sound of her voice.  She had not been really angry with him for the wantonness of those stones.  She had been very ready with her forgiveness, her kindly offer of friendship.  She had never been other than kind to him ever since.  She had awakened in him the deepest, most humble gratitude and devotion.  She had even once or twice shielded him from Dicky’s never unjust wrath.  And he had come to love her second only to Dicky who must for ever hold the foremost place in his heart.

He had come to love her—­and he stood between her and happiness.  He did not reason the matter.  He had small reasoning power.  He recognized that Jack’s brain was superior to his, and Jack had made known to him this monstrous thing.  True, Dicky had denied it, but somehow that denial had not been so convincing as Jack’s statement had been.  The corrosive poison had already done its work, and there was no antidote.  He knew that Dicky loved Juliet, knew it from his own lips.  “The woman I love—­the woman I love—­” How often had the low-spoken words recurred to his memory!  And Dicky was not happy.  He had watched him narrowly ever since that night.  Dicky was not really hopeful for the winning of his heart’s desire.  He had said there were many obstacles.  What they were, Robin could but vaguely conjecture—­save one!  And that one stood out in the darkness of his soul, clear as a cross against the falling night.  Dicky had no chance of winning any woman so long as he—­the village idiot—­the hideous abortion—­stood in his way.  That was the truth as he saw it—­the bitter, unavoidable truth.  O God, it wasn’t fair—­it wasn’t fair!

The evening shadows were lengthening.  The waves splashed softly against the fallen rocks forty to fifty feet below.  They seemed to be calling to him.  It was almost like a summons from far away—­almost like a bugle-call heard in the mists of sleep.  Somehow they soothed him, lessening the poignancy of his anguish, checking his wild rebellion, making him aware of a strangely comforting peace.