sing
of the sun--my heart leaps up! And you are like the coming of the night
making the world beautiful and mysterious. For behind your eyes and
behind your words, out of the sound of your voice and your glances, I
guess at new things, strange things, hidden things. Treasures which
cannot be held in the hands. Should you grow as old as Elijah, withered,
meager as a grasshopper, the treasures would still be there. I, who have
seen them, can never forget them!"

Once more she covered her eyes with her hand, and David started up from
his chair.

"What have I done?" he asked faintly of Connor. He hurried around the
table to her. "Look up! How have I harmed you?"

"I am only tired," she said.

"I am a fool! I should have known. Come!" said David.

He drew her from the chair and led her across the lawn, supporting her.
At her door: "May sleep be to you like the sound of running water,"
murmured David.

And when the door was closed he went hastily back to Connor.

_CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX_

"What have I done? What have I done?" he kept moaning. "She is in pain.
I have hurt her."

"Sit down," said Connor, deeply amused.

It had been a curious revelation to him, this open talk of a man who was
falling in love. He remembered the way he had proposed to a girl, once:
"Say, Betty, don't you think you and me would hit it off pretty well,
speaking permanently?"

This flaunting language was wholly ludicrous to Connor. It was
book-stuff.

David had obeyed him with childlike docility, and sat now like a pupil
about to be corrected by the master.

"That point is this," explained Connor gravely. "You have the wrong
idea. As far as I can make out, you like Ruth?"

"It is a weak word. Bah! It is not enough."

"But it's enough to tell her. You see, men outside of the Garden don't
talk to a girl the way you do, and it embarrasses her to have you talk
about her all the time."

"Is it true?" murmured the penitent David. "Then what should I have
said?"

"Well--er--you might have said--that the flower went pretty well in her
hair, and let it go at that."

"But it was more, more, more! Benjamin, my brother, these hands of mine
picked that very flower. And I see that it has pleased her. She had
taken it up and placed it in her hair. It changes her. My flower brings
her close to me. It means that we have found a thing which pleases us
both. Just as you and I, Benjamin, are drawn together by the love of one
horse. So that