“You shall not go!” Ruth sobbed.  “It is no affair of yours.  It is between the police and Isaac.”

“I want to stop his shooting,” Arnold replied.  “He must be mad to use firearms against the police.  Let me go, Ruth.”

“You can’t!” she shrieked.  “You can’t catch him now!”

Then she suddenly held her ears.  Three times quickly they heard the report of the pistol.  There was a moment’s silence, then more shots.  Arnold picked Ruth up in his arms and, running with her across the landing, laid her in his own easy-chair.

“I must see what has happened!” he exclaimed, breathlessly.  “Wait here.”

She was powerless to resist him.  He tore himself free from the clutch of her fingers and rushed down the stairs, expecting every moment to come across the body of one of the policemen.  To his immense relief, he reached the street without discovering any signs of the tragedy he feared.  Adam Street was deserted, but in the gardens below the Terrace he could hear the sound of voices, and a torn piece of clothing hung from the spike of one of the railings.  Isaac had evidently made for the gardens and the river.  The sound of the chase grew fainter and fainter, and there were no more shots.  Arnold, after a few minutes’ hesitation, turned round and reclimbed the stairs.  The place smelt of gunpowder, and little puffs of smoke were curling upwards.

Arrived on the top landing, he closed the door of Isaac’s room and entered his own apartment.  Ruth had dragged herself to the window and was leaning out.

“He has gone across the gardens,” she cried breathlessly.  “I saw him running.  Perhaps he will get away, after all.  I saw one of the policemen fall down, and he was quite a long way ahead then.”

“At any rate, no harm was done by the firing,” Arnold declared.  “I don’t think he really shot at them at all.”

They knelt side by side before the window-sill.  The gardens were still faintly visible in the dim moonlight, but all signs of disturbance had passed away.  She clung nervously to his arm.

“Arnold,” she whispered, “tell me, what do you think he has done?”

“I don’t suppose he has done anything very much,” Arnold replied, cheerfully.  “What I really think is that he has got mixed up with some of these anarchists, writing for this wretched paper, and they have probably let him in for some of their troubles.”

They stayed there for a measure of time they were neither of them able to compute.  At last, with a little sigh, he rose to his feet.  For the first time they began to realize what had happened.

“Isaac will not come back,” he said.

She clung to him hysterically.

“Arnold,” she cried, “I am nervous.  I could not sleep in that room.  I never want to see it again as long as I live.”

For a moment he was perplexed.  Then he smiled.  “It’s rather an awkward situation for us attic dwellers,” he remarked.  “I’ll bring your couch in here, if you like, and you can lie before the window, where it’s cool.”