“Dick!” she said again very earnestly.  “Don’t send me away!  Let me help you!”

“You can’t,” he said.  “You’ve been too good to me—­already.”

“You wouldn’t say that to me if I were—­your wife,” she said.

He flinched sharply.  “Juliet!  Don’t torture me!  I’ve had—­as much as I can stand to-night.”

She held out her hand to him with a gesture superbly simple.  “My dear, I will marry you to-morrow if you will have me,” she said.

He stood for a long second staring at her.  Then she saw his face change and harden.  The ascetic look that she had noticed long ago came over it like a mask.

“No!” he said.  “No!”

Again he turned from her.  He went away up the long room, the bare boards echoing to the tramp of his feet with a dull and hopeless sound.  He came to a stand before the writing-table at the further end, and from there he spoke to her, his words brief, as it were edged with steel.

“Can you imagine how Cain felt when he said that his punishment was greater than he could bear?  That’s how I feel to-night.  I am like Cain.  Whatever I touch is cursed.”

The words startled her.  Again for a second she wondered if the suffering through which he had passed had affected his brain.  But she felt no fear.  She kept her purpose before her, clear and steadfast as a beacon shining in the dark.

“You are not like Cain,” she said.  “And even if you were, do you think I should love you any the less?”

He made a desperate gesture.  “Would you love me if I were a murderer?” he said.

“I love you—­whatever you are,” she made unfaltering reply.

He turned upon her, almost like an animal at bay.  “I am—­a murderer, Juliet!” he said, a terrible fire in his eyes.

In spite of herself she flinched, so awful was his look.  “Dick, what do you mean?”

He flung out a hand as if to keep her from him though she had not moved.  “I will tell you what I mean, and then—­you will go.  On the night Robin was born,—­I killed his father!”

“Dick!” she said.

He went on rapidly.  “I was a boy at the time, but I had a man’s purpose.  My mother was dying.  They sent me to fetch him.  I loathed the man.  So did she.  He was at The Three Tuns—­drinking.  I hung about till he came out.  He was blind drunk, and the night was dark.  He took the wrong path that led to the cliff, and I let him go.  In the morning they found him on the rocks, dead.  I might have saved him.  I didn’t.  I went back to my mother, and stayed with her—­till she died.”

“Oh Dick—­my dear!” she said.