He stood at last upon the top landing.  He set her down with a little thrill, assailed by a medley of sensations, the significance of which confused him.  She seemed still to cling to him, and she pointed to his door.

“For five minutes,” she begged, “let us sit in our chairs and look down at the river.  To-night it is too hot to sleep.”

Even while he opened his door, he hesitated.

“What about Isaac?” he asked.

She shivered and looked over her shoulder.  They were in his room now and she closed the door.  On the threshold she stood quite still for a moment, as though listening.  There was something in her face which alarmed him.

“Do you know, I believe that I am afraid to go back,” she said.  “Isaac has been stranger than ever these last few days.  All the time he is locked up in his room, and he shows himself only at night.”

Arnold dragged her chair up to the window and installed her comfortably.  He himself was thinking of Isaac’s face under the gaslight, as he had seen him stepping away from the taxicab.

“Isaac was always queer,” he reminded her, reassuringly.

She drew him down to her side.

“There has been a difference these last few days,” she whispered.  “I am afraid—­I am terribly afraid that he has done something really wrong.”

Arnold felt a little shiver of fear himself.

“You must remember,” he said quietly, “that after all Isaac is, in a measure, outside your life.  No one can influence him for either good or evil.  He is not like other men.  He must go his own way, and I, too, am afraid that it may be a troublous one.  He chose it for himself and neither you nor I can help.  I wouldn’t think about him at all, dear, if you can avoid it.  And for yourself, remember always that you have another protector.”

The faintest of smiles parted her lips.  In the moonlight, which was already stealing into the room through the bare, uncurtained window, her face seemed like a piece of beautiful marble statuary, ghostly, yet in a single moment exquisitely human.

“I have no claim upon you, Arnold,” she reminded him, “and I think that soon you will pass out of my life.  It is only natural.  You must go on, I must remain.  And that is the end of it,” she added, with a little quiver of the lips.  “Now let us finish talking about ourselves.  I want to talk about your new friends.”

“Tell me what you really think of them?” he begged.  “Count Sabatini has been so kind to me that if I try to think about him at all I am already prejudiced.”

“I think,” she replied slowly, “that Count Sabatini is the strangest man whom I ever met.  Do you remember when he stood and looked down upon us?  I felt—­but it was so foolish!”

“You felt what?” he persisted.

She shook her head.

“I cannot tell.  As though we were not strangers at all.  I suppose it is what they call mesmerism.  He had that soft, delightful way of speaking, and gentle mannerism.  There was nothing abrupt or new about him.  He seemed, somehow, to become part of the life of any one in whom he chose to interest himself in the slightest.  And he talked so delightfully, Arnold.  I cannot tell you how kind he was to me.”