"I ought to be," Dick said, as he sat down and began to straighten out the muddle in front of him.
Robin knelt up by his side. "Please don't be, Dicky!" he said very earnestly. "I won't ever do it again. I swear I won't."
Dick smiled somewhat wryly. "No. You'll probably think of some other devilry even worse." He put his arm round the humped shoulders with the words. "You'll forget--you always do--that it's I who have to pay."
Robin pressed against him, still dog-like in his contrition. "Will it cost much?" he asked.
"Oh that! The window, you mean? Well, not so much as if you had broken Jack's head--as you intended."
There was some hint of returning grimness in Dick's voice. Robin made an ingratiating movement, leaning his rough head against his brother's arm.
Dick went on, ignoring the unspoken appeal. "You've got to stop it Robin. If you don't, there'll be trouble--worse trouble than you've had yet. You don't want to leave me, I suppose?"
"Leave you, Dicky?" Robin stared round in horror. "Leave you?" he repeated incredulously. "Go to prison, do you mean?"
"Dick!" Robin stared at him aghast. "But--you--you'd never let them--take me?"
"If you were to damage Jack--or anyone else--badly, I shouldn't be able to prevent it." Dick said rather wearily. "If it came to that--I shouldn't even try."
"Dick!" Robin gasped again, then passionately; "But I--I--I couldn't live--away from you! I'd--I'd kill myself!"
"No, you wouldn't. You wouldn't get the chance." Dick was staring straight before him down the room, as if he watched some evil vision against the darkness. "People aren't allowed to kill themselves in prison. If they try to do anything of that sort, they're tied down till they come to their senses. If they behave like brutes, they're treated as such, till at last they turn into that and nothing else. And then--God help them!"
A sudden hard shudder caught him. He shook it off impatiently, and turned to the quivering figure still kneeling in the circle of his arm.
He gripped it suddenly close. "That's the sort of hell these fiendish tempers of yours might end in," he said. "You've got to save yourself, my son. I can't save you."
Robin clung to him tensely, desperately. "You don't--want me to go, Dicky?" he whispered.