Arnold shook his head.

“The cases are not similar, Isaac,” he declared.

“You lie!” Isaac shrieked.  “There is not a hair’s-breadth of difference!  Rosario earned his wealth in an office hung with costly pictures; he earned it lounging in ease in a padded chair, earned it by the monkey tricks of a dishonest brain.  Never an honest day’s work did he perform in his life, never a day did he stand in the market-place where the weaker were falling day by day.  In fat comfort he lived, and he died fittingly on the portals of a restaurant, the cost of one meal at which would have fed a dozen starving children.  Pity Rosario!  Pity his soul, if you will, but not his dirty body!”

“The man is dead,” Arnold muttered.

“Dead, and let him rot!” Isaac cried fiercely.  “There may be others!”

He caught up his cloth cap and, without another word, left the room.  Arnold looked after him curiously, more than a little impressed by the man’s passionate earnestness.  Ruth, on the other hand, was unmoved.

“Isaac is Isaac,” she murmured.  “He sees life like that.  He would wear the flesh off his bones preaching against wealth.  It is as though there were some fire inside which consumed him all the time.  When he comes back, he will be calmer.”

But Arnold remained uneasy.  Isaac’s words, and his attitude of pent-up fury, had made a singular impression upon him.  For those few moments, the Hyde Park demagogue with his frothy vaporings existed no longer.  It seemed to Arnold as though a flash of the real fire had suddenly blazed into the room.

“If Isaac goes about the world like that, trouble will come of it,” he said thoughtfully.  “Have you ever heard him speak of Rosario before?”

“Never,” she answered.  “I have heard him talk like that, though, often.  To me it sounds like the waves beating upon the shores.  They may rage as furiously, or ripple as softly as the tides can bring them,—­it makes no difference ...  I want you to go on, please.  I want you to finish telling me—­your news.”

Arnold looked away from the closed door.  He looked back again into the girl’s face.  There was still that appearance of strained attention about her mouth and eyes.

“You are right,” he admitted.  “These things, after all, are terrible enough, but they are like the edge of a storm from which one has found shelter.  Isaac ought to realize it.”

“Tell me what this is which has happened to you!” she begged.

He shook himself free from that cloud of memories.  He gave himself up instead to the joy of telling her his good news.

“Listen, then,” he said.  “Mr. Weatherley, in consideration not altogether, I am afraid, of my clerklike abilities, but of my shoulders and muscle, has appointed me his private secretary, with a seat in his office and a salary of three pounds a week.  Think of it, Ruth!  Three pounds a week!”

A smile lightened her face for a moment as she squeezed his fingers.