"She is safe, for the present," Arnold told him. "My circumstances have improved and I have taken a small flat in which there is a room for her. This may do for the present, but Ruth, after all, is a young woman. She is morbidly sensitive. However willing I may be, and I am willing, it is not right that she should remain with me. I have always taken it for granted that save for you she has no relatives and no friends. Is this the truth? Is there no one whom she has the right to ask for a home?"
Isaac was silent. Some movements in the street below disturbed him, and he walked with catlike tread to the window, peering through a hole in the blind for several moments. When he was satisfied that nothing unusual was transpiring, he came back.
"Listen," he said hoarsely, "I am a dead man already in all but facts. I can tell you nothing of Ruth's relatives. Better that she starved upon the streets than found them. But there is her chance still. My mind has been filled with big things and I had forgotten it. Before we moved into Adam Street, the last doctor who saw Ruth suggested an operation. He felt sure that it would be successful. It was to cost forty guineas. I have saved very nearly the whole of that money. It stands in her name at the Westminster Savings Bank. If she goes there and proves her identity, she can get it. I saved that money—God knows how!"
"What is the name of the doctor?" Arnold asked.
"His name was Heskell and he was at the London Hospital," Isaac replied. "Now I have done with you. That is Ruth's chance—there is nothing else I can do. Be off as quickly as you can. If you give information as to my whereabouts, you will probably pay for it with your life, for there are others besides myself who are hiding in this house. Now go. Do you hear?"
Arnold's anger against the man suddenly faded away. It seemed to him, as he stood there, that he was but a product of the times, fashioned by the grinding wheel of circumstance, a physical wreck, a creature without love or life or hope.
"Isaac," he said, "why don't you try and escape? Get away to some other country, out onto the land somewhere. Leave the wrongs of these others to come right with time. Work for your daily bread, give your brain a rest."
Isaac made no reply. Only his long, skinny forefinger shot out toward the door. Arnold knew that he might just as well have been talking to the most hopeless lunatic ever confined in padded room.
"If this is to be farewell, Isaac," he continued, "let me at least tell you this before I go. You are doing Ruth a cruel wrong. God knows I am willing enough to take charge of her, but it's none the less a brutal position for you to put her in. You have the chance, if you will, to set her free. Think what her life has been up till now. Have you ever thought of it, I wonder? Have you ever thought of the long days she has spent in that attic when you have been away, without books, with barely enough to eat, without companionship or friends? These are the things to which you have doomed her by your cursed selfishness. If she has friends who could take her away, and you refuse to speak, then all I can say is that you deserve any fate that may come to you."
Isaac remained silent for several moments. His face was dark and dogged. When he spoke, it was with reluctance.