“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.

“Young man,” he said, “every word which you have spoken has been in my brain while I have lain here waiting for the end.  A few hours ago I slept and had a dream.  When I awoke, I was weak.  See here.”

He drew from his pocket two sheets of closely-written foolscap.

“The story of Ruth’s life is here,” he declared.  “I wrote it with a stump of pencil on the back of this table.  I wrote it, but I have changed my mind, and I am going to tear it up.”

Arnold was light on his feet, with a great reach, and Isaac was unprepared.  In a moment the latter was on his back, and the soiled sheets of foolscap were in Arnold’s pocket.  Isaac’s fingers seemed to hover upon the trigger of his pistol as he lay there, crouched against the wall.

“Don’t be a fool!” Arnold cried, roughly.  “You’ll do no good by killing me.  The girl has a right to her chance.”

There were several seconds of breathless silence, during which it seemed to Arnold that Isaac had made up and changed his mind more than once.  Then at last he lowered his pistol.

“We’ll call it chance,” he muttered.  “I never meant to write the rubbish.  Since you have got it, though, it is the truth.  Do with it what you will.  There is one thing more.  You know this man Sabatini?”

“If you mean the Count Sabatini, it was he who gave me your address,” Arnold reminded him.

Isaac smiled grimly.

“Citizen Sabatini is all we know him by here.  He knows well that to a man with his aspirations, a man who desires to use as his tools such as myself and my comrades, a title is an evil recommendation.  He came to us first, as a man and a brother,—­he, Count Sabatini, Marquis de Lossa, Chevalier de St. Jerome, Knight of the Holy Roman Empire,—­an aristocrat, you perceive, and one of the worst.  Yet we have trusted him.”

“I do not believe,” Arnold exclaimed, “that Sabatini would betray any one!”

“I am not accusing him,” Isaac said solemnly.  “I simply hold that he is not the man to lead a great revolutionary movement.  It is for that reason, among others, that I have rejected his advances.  Sabatini as president would mean very much the same thing as a king.  Will you give him a message from me?”