ntain of youth. Here was the
explanation, too, of that intolerable brightness of his eye.

The gambler bowed his head.

When he looked up again his soul had traveled higher and lower in one
instant than it had ever moved before; he was staring like a child.
Above all, he wanted to see the face of David again, to examine that
mysterious change, but the master was already walking down the hill and
had almost reached the circle of the trees on the opposite side of the
slope. But now Connor noted a difference everywhere surrounding him. The
air was warmer; the wind seemed to have changed its fiber; and then he
saw that the treetops opposite him were shaking and glistening in a
glory of light. Connor went limp and leaned against a tree, laughing
weakly, silently.

"Hell," he said at length, recovering himself. "It was only the sunrise!
And me--I thought--"

He began to laugh again, aloud, and the sound was caught up by the
hillside and thrown back at him in a sharp echo. Connor went
thoughtfully back to the house. In the patio he found the table near the
fountain laid with a cloth, the wood scrubbed white, and on it the heavy
earthenware. David Eden came in with the calm, the same eye, difficult
to meet. Indeed, then and thereafter when he was with David, he found
himself continually looking away, and resorting to little maneuvers to
divert the glance of his host.

"Good morrow," said David.

"I have kept you waiting?" asked Connor.

The master paused to make sure that he had understood the speech, then
replied:

"If I had been hungry I should have eaten."

There was no rebuff in that quiet statement, but it opened another door
to Connor's understanding.

"Take this chair," said David, moving it from the end of the table to
the side. "Sitting here you can look through the gate of the patio and
down to the lake. It is not pleasant to have four walls about one; but
that is a thing which Isaac cannot understand."

The gambler nodded, and to show that he could be as unceremonious as his
host, sat down without further words. He immediately felt awkward, for
David remained standing. He broke a morsel from the loaf of bread, which
was yet the only food on the table, and turned to the East with a solemn
face.

"Out of His hands from whom I take this food," said the master--"into
His hands I give myself."

He sat down in turn, and Isaac came instantly with the breakfast. It was
an astonishing menu to one accustomed