han he
had been before. And when she saw him so docile to her wishes, for all
his strength and his mastery, the only thing that kept her from opening
her heart to him, and despising the game which she and Connor were
playing with him, was the warning of the gambler.

"I've heard a young buck talk to a young squaw--before he married her.
The same line of junk!"

Connor must be right. He came from the great city.

But before that ride was over she was repeating that warning very much
as Odysseus used the flower of Hermes against the arts of Circe. For the
Garden of Eden, as they came back to the house after the circuit, seemed
to her very much like a little kingdom, and the monarch thereof was
inviting her in dumb-show to be the queen of the realm.

_CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE_

At the house they were met by one of the servants who had been waiting
for David to receive from the master definite orders concerning some
woodchopping. For the trees of the garden were like children to David of
Eden, and he allowed only the ones he himself designated to be cut for
timber or fuel. He left the girl with manifest reluctance.

"For when I leave you of what do you think, and what do you do? I am
like the blind."

She felt this speech was peculiar in character. Who but David of Eden
could have been jealous of the very thoughts of another? And smiling at
this, she went into the patio where Ben Connor was still lounging. Few
things had ever been more gratifying to the gambler than the sight of
the girl's complacent smile, for he knew that she was judging David.

"What happened?" he asked.

"Nothing worth repeating. But I think you're wrong, Ben. He isn't a
barbarian. He's just a child."

"That's another word for the same thing. Ever see anything more brutal
than a child? The wildest savage that ever stepped is a saint compared
with a ten-year-old boy."

"Perhaps. He acts like ten years. When I mention leaving the valley he
flies into a tantrum; he has taken me so much for granted that he has
even picked out the site for my house."

"As if you'd ever stay in a place like this!"

He covered his touch of anxiety with loud laughter.

"I don't know," she was saying thoughtfully a moment later. "I like
it--a lot."

"Anything seems pretty good after Lukin. But when your auto is buzzing
down Broadway--"

She interrupted him with a quick little laugh of excitement.

"But do you really think I can make him leave the valley?