ROBERT.
But for that I should not have come.
RICHARD.
Did it strike you that if you had gone without coming here I should have understood it—in my own way?
ROBERT.
Yes, it did.
RICHARD.
What, then, do you wish me to believe?
ROBERT.
I wish you to believe that I failed. That Bertha is yours now as she was nine years ago, when you—when we—met her first.
RICHARD.
Do you want to know what I did?
ROBERT.
No.
RICHARD.
I came home at once.
ROBERT.
Did you hear Bertha return?
RICHARD.
No. I wrote all the night. And thought. [Pointing to the study.] In there. Before dawn I went out and walked the strand from end to end.