-lion. She took up some of the
purple flowers, and letting the velvet petals trail over her finger
tips, she turned to David with a smile. But what Connor saw, and saw
with a thrill of alarm, was that her eyes were filling with tears.

"See!" said David gloomily. "I have done this to make you happy, and now
you are sad!"

"Because it is so beautiful."

"Yes," said David slowly. "I think I understand."

But Connor took one of the flowers from her hand. She cried out, but too
late to keep him from ripping the blossom to pieces, and now he held up
a single petal, long, graceful, red-purple at the broader end and deep
yellow at the narrow.

"Think of that a million times bigger," said Connor, "and made out of
velvet. That'd be a design for a cloak, eh? Cost about a thousand bucks
to imitate this petal, but it'd be worth it to see you in it, eh?"

She looked to David with a smile of apology for Connor, but her hand
accepted the petal, and her second smile was for Connor himself.

_CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE_

When they went out into the patio again, David had lost a large part of
his buoyancy of spirits, as though in some subtle manner Connor had
overcast the triumph of the room; he left them with word that the
evening meal would soon be ready and hurried off calling orders to
Zacharias.

"Why did you do it?" she asked Connor as soon as they were alone.

"Because it made me mad to see a stargazer like that turning your head."

"But didn't you think the room was beautiful?"

"Sure. Like a riot in a florist's shop. But don't let this David take
you off guard with his rooms full of flowers and full of silence."

"Silence?"

"Haven't I told you about his Room of Silence? That's one of his queer
dodges. That room; you see? When anything bothers him he goes over and
sits down in there, because--do you know what he thinks sits with him?"

"Well?"

"God!"

She was between a smile and a gasp.

"Yep, that's David," grinned Connor. "Just plain nut."

"What's inside?"

"I don't know. Maybe flowers."

"Let's find out."

He caught her arm quickly.

"Not in a thousand years!" He changed color at the thought and glanced
guiltily around. "That would be the smash of everything. Why, he turned
over the whole Garden of Eden to me. I can go anywhere, but not a step
inside that room. It's his Holy Ground, you see! Maybe it's where he
keeps his jack. And I've a hunch that he has a slough of it tucked away
somewhere.