"

"Of course I'm sure."

"He says there's a law against it."

"I tell you, Ruth, you're his law now; not whatever piffle is in that
Room of Silence."

She looked earnestly at the closed door. Her silence had always bothered
the gambler, and this one particularly annoyed him.

"Let's hear your thoughts?" he asked uneasily.

"It's just an idea of mine that inside that room we can find out
everything we want to know about David Eden."

"What do we want to know?" growled Connor. "I know everything that's
necessary. He's a nut with a gang of the best horses that ever stepped.
I'm talking horse, not David Eden. If I have to make the fool rich, it
isn't because I want to."

She returned no direct answer, but after a moment: "I wish I knew."

"What?"

She became profoundly serious.

"The point is this: he _may_ be something more than a boy or a savage.
And if he _is_ something more, he's the finest man I've ever laid eyes
on. That's why I want to get inside that room. That's why I want to
learn the secret--if there is a secret--the things he believes in, how
he happens to be what he is and how--"

Connor had endured her rising warmth of expression as long as he could.
Now he exploded.

"You do me one favor," he cried excitedly, more moved than she had ever
seen him before. "Let me do your thinking for you when it comes to other
men. You take my word about this David Eden. Bah! When I have you fixed
up in little old Manhattan you'll forget about him and his mystery
inside a week. Will you lay off on the thinking?"

She nodded absently. In reality she was struck by the first similarity
she had ever noticed between David of Eden and Connor the gambler:
within ten minutes they had both expressed remarkable concern as to what
might be her innermost thoughts. She began to feel that Connor himself
might have elements of the boy in his make up--the cruel boy which he
protested was in David Eden.

She had many reasons for liking Connor. For one thing he had offered
her an escape from her old imprisoned life. Again he had flattered her
in the most insinuating manner by his complete trust. She knew that
there was not one woman in ten thousand to whom he would have confided
his great plan, and not one in a million whose ability to execute his
scheme he would have trusted.

More than this, before her trip to the Garden he had given her a large
sum of money for the purchase of the Indian's gelding; and Ruth Manning
had