148
[Act III
Robert
Yes.
Richard
Why?
Robert
My story is not very nice, is it?
Richard
But you have come.
Robert
Bertha sent me a message to come.
Richard
But for that . . .?
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.
