Later--Robin had said to herself--she would go to the cottage, and she would sit upon the hearth and lay her head on Mrs. Bennett's knee and they would cling together and sob and talk of the battlefields and the boys lying dead there. But she had no thought of saying any other thing to her, because there was nothing left to say. She had said nothing to Dr. Redcliff; she had only sat listening to him and feeling her eyes widening as she tried to follow and understand what he was saying in such a grave, low-toned cautious way--as if he himself were almost afraid as he went on. What he said would once have been strange and wonderful, but now it was not, because wonder had gone out of the world. She only seemed to sit stunned before the feeling that now the dream was not a sacred secret any longer and there grew within her, as she heard, a wild longing to fly to the Wood as if it were a living human thing who would hear her and understand--as if it would be like arms enclosing her. Something would be there listening and she could talk to it and ask it what to do. She had spoken to it as she staggered down the path--she had cried out to it with wild broken words, and then when she heard nothing she had fallen down upon the earth and the sobbing--sobbing--had begun. "Donal!" she said. "Donal!" And again, "Donal!" over and over. But nothing answered, for even that which had been Donal--with the heavenly laugh and the blue in his gay eyes and the fine, long smooth hands--had been blown to fragments in a field somewhere--and there was nothing anywhere. * * * * * She had heard no footsteps and she was sobbing still when a voice spoke at her side--the voice of some one standing near. "It is Donal you want, poor child--no one else," it said. That it should be this voice--Lord Coombe's! And that amazing as it was to hear it, she was not amazed and did not care! Her sobbing ceased so far as sobbing can cease on full flow. She lay still but for low shuddering breaths. "I have come because it is Donal," he said. "You told me once that you had always hated me. Hatred is useless now. Don't feel it." But she did not answer. "You probably will not believe anything I say. Well I must speak to you whether you believe me or not." She lay still and he himself was silent. His voice seemed to be a sudden thing when he spoke. "I loved him too. I found it out the morning I saw him march away." He had seen him! Since she had looked at his beautiful face this man had looked at it! "You!" She sat up on the earth and gazed, swaying. So he knew he could go on. "I wanted a son. I once lay on the moss in a wood and sobbed as you have sobbed. _She_ was killed too." But Robin was thinking only of Donal. "What--was his face like? Did you--see him near?" "Quite near. I stood on the street. I followed. He did not see me. He saw nothing." The sobbing broke forth again.