“I feel,” she murmured, “as though I were in a theatre for the first time.  Everything is strange.”

“It is the theatre of nature,” Arnold replied.  “If you close your eyes and listen, you can hear the orchestra.  There is a lark singing above my head, and a thrush somewhere back in the wood there.”

“And see, in the distance there are houses,” Ruth continued softly.  “Just fancy, Arnold, people, if they had no work to do, could live here, could live always out of sight of the hideous, smoky city, out of hearing of its thousand discords.”

He smiled.

“There are a great many who feel like that,” he said, his eyes fixed upon the horizon, “and then, as the days go by, they find that there is something missing.  The city of a thousand discords generally has one clear cry, Ruth.”

“For you, perhaps,” she answered, “because you are young and because you are ambitious.  But for me who lie on my back all day long, think of the glory of this!”

Arnold slowly sat up.

“Upon my word!” he exclaimed.  “Why not.  Why shouldn’t you stay in the country for the summer?  I hate London, too.  There are cheap tickets, and bicycles, and all sorts of things.  I wonder whether we couldn’t manage it.”

She said nothing.  His thoughts were busy with the practical side of it.  There was an opportunity here, too, to prepare her for what he felt sure was inevitable.

“You know, Ruth,” he said, “I don’t wish to say anything against Isaac, and I don’t want to make you uneasy, but you know as well as I do that he has a strange maggot in his brain.  When I first heard him talk, I thought of him as a sort of fanatic.  It seems to me that he has changed.  I am not sure that such changes as have taken place in him lately have not been for the worse.”

“Tell me what you mean?” she begged.

“I mean,” he continued, “that Isaac, who perhaps in himself may be incapable of harm, might be an easy prey to those who worked upon his wild ideas.  Hasn’t it struck you that for the last few days—­”

She clutched at his hand and stopped him.

“Don’t!” she implored.  “These last few days have been horrible.  Isaac has not left his room except to creep out sometimes into mine.  He keeps his door locked.  What he does I don’t know, but if he hears a step on the stairs he slinks away, and his face is like the face of a hunted wolf.  Arnold, do you think that he has been getting into trouble?”

“I am afraid,” Arnold said, regretfully, “that it is not impossible.  Tell me, Ruth, you are very fond of him?”

“He was my mother’s brother—­the only relative I have in the world,” she answered.  “What could I do without him?”

“He doesn’t seem to want you particularly, just now, at any rate,” Arnold said.  “I don’t see why we shouldn’t take rooms out at one of these little villages.  I could go back and forth quite easily.  You’d like it, wouldn’t you, Ruth?  Fancy lying in a low, comfortable chair, and looking up at the blue sky, and listening to the birds and the humming of bees.  The hours would slip by.”