d once. The next time I'll have you flayed
alive."

Instead of answering, Joseph merely grinned more openly, and the
gambler, to forget the ape-face, wheeled and hurried out from the trees.
The touch of nightmare dread did not leave him until he rejoined Ruth on
the higher terrace.

They found the patio glowing with light, the table near the fountain,
and three chairs around it. David came out of the shadow of the arcade
to meet them, and he was as uneasy as a boy who had a surprise for
grown-ups. He had not even time for a greeting.

"You have not seen your room?" he said to Ruth. "I have made it ready
for you. Come!"

He led the way half a pace in front, glancing back at them as though to
reprove their slowness, until he reached a door at which he turned and
faced her, laughing with excitement. She could hardly believe that this
man with his childish gayety was the same whose fury had terrified the
servants that same afternoon.

"Close your eyes--close them fast. You will not look until I say?"

She obeyed, setting her teeth to keep from smiling.

"Now come forward--step high for the doorway. So! You are in. Now
wait--now open your eyes and look!"

She obeyed again and saw first David standing back with an anxious smile
and the gesture of one who reveals, but is not quite sure of its effect.
Then she heard a soft, startled exclamation from Connor behind her. Last
of all she saw the room.

It was as if the walls had been broken down and a garden let inside--it
gave an effect of open air, sunlight and wind. Purple flowers like warm
shadows banked the farther corners, and out of them rose a great vine
draping the window. It had been torn bodily from the earth, and now the
roots were packed with damp moss, yellow-green. It bore in clusters and
single flowers and abundant bloom, each blossom as large as the mallow,
and a dark gold so rich that Ruth well-nigh listened for the murmur of
bees working this mine of pollen. From above, the great flowers hung
down against the dull red of the sunset sky; and from below the distant
treetops on the terrace pointed up with glimmers of the lake between.
There was only the reflected light of the evening, now, but the cuplike
blossoms were filled to the brim with a glow of their own.

She looked away.

A dapple deerskin covered the bed like the shadow under a tree in
mid-day, and the yellow of the flowers was repeated dimly on the floor
by a great, tawny hide of a mountain